President Joe Biden has scheduled a state funeral in Washington for former President Jimmy Carter on Jan. 9.
Biden also declared Jan. 9 as a National Day of Mourning across the U.S. … Biden ordered U.S. flags to fly at half-staff for 30 days from Sunday.
In Yiddish, a mensch or mentsh is “a person of integrity and honor”. American humorist Leo Rosten describes a mentsh as “someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. The key to being ‘a real mensch’ is nothing less than character, rectitude, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, decorous.” The term is used as a high compliment, implying the rarity and value of that individual’s qualities.
Jimmy Carter was remarkable for many reasons, but three stand out for me. First was his surprising and unlikely path to the presidency in 1976. Second was his brilliance – people forget that he was not only a humble peanut farmer but also a nuclear engineer. Third is that he was a much better president than he was credited for at the time.
My shelf of Jimmy’s books includes an engaging historical fiction novel, The Hornet’s Nest, about the Revolutionary War set in the South.
With a discerning eye and a commitment to historical accuracy, Carter provides a unique view of the American Revolution by presenting lesser-known aspects of the conflict — including the shameful way everyone involved tried to manipulate and control the Indian tribes. Despite a huge cast of characters and an extremely detailed and complex narrative, Carter keeps the story rooted in the personalities of common folks faced with extraordinary difficulties. The Hornet’s Nest is a vivid, compelling, and original fiction debut from one of our most noted history makers.
I voted for Jimmy in ‘76. I didn’t get to watch his inauguration but I heard it on the radio, being as we were in the car driving from Orlando to our new home in Houston. That day there was snow on the oranges hanging on the trees.
NYT: “In accordance with federal law, Mr. Biden ordered flags lowered to half-staff for the next 30 days, meaning they will still be lowered on Jan. 20, when Mr. Trump is inaugurated.”
Once every two weeks during my internship in the White House Media Liaison Office I’d bring our briefing paper to Carter in the small outer office adjacent to the Oval Office that he preferred to use. With few words and seldom any questions he would scan our bios and some quotes from out-of-DC columnists, editors and reporters he was about to meet in the Cabinet Room. I was always astonished how he could recall so many particulars from that document in conversation with them, giving them the impression he knew them and regularly read their work. It was always said he had a photographic memory. I can attest that it seemed to me he surely did.
“The US President-elect is set to resume office in January, but his indirect impact is already being felt in the crypto market. Two of the most impacted coins are Hedera (HBAR) and Ripple (XRP), which were recently purchased by World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a Trump-backed decentralized finance (DeFi) blockchain.”
“The controversial China-born crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun has invested $30 million in President-elect Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial, making him the largest investor in the decentralized finance project.”
“The U.S. is becoming the blockchain hub, and Bitcoin owes it to @realDonaldTrump!,” Sun, the founder of the cryptocurrency firm Tron, announced in a post on X Monday. “TRON is committed to making America great again and leading innovation.” A spokesperson for Sun didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.”
*Now, tRUMPsky is a crypto-grifter. This is troubling in so many levels.
Yep, we’re about to inaugurate an adjudicated rapist.
“The jury could reasonably infer … that Mr. Trump engaged in similar conduct with other women — a pattern of abrupt, nonconsensual, and physical advances on women he barely knew”
— 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds $5 million verdict against Trump for sexual abuse and defamation of E. Jean Carroll.. https://politi.co/400kEUC
The first time I met Jimmy Carter I had never heard of him, even though he had been governor of next-door Georgia. It was at the Democratic Midterm Convention in 1974 in Kansas City. During a chance encounter in the hotel elevator his son Chip invited me and a friend to breakfast with “my Dad, he’s running for president”. At breakfast (with several other Floridians) Jimmy talked about the embarrassment of George Wallace as the face of the party in the South, and the need to beat him in the 1976 primaries, especially in Florida. We were hooked on that idea, even though we knew so little about Carter, and went to work, even taking a semester off from college to get it done. We beat Wallace by over 50,000 votes in Florida.
Dave Barry is in the house. WaPo. 2024 in review. How stupid was 2024? Let’s start with the art world, which over the centuries has given humanity so many beautiful, timeless masterpieces. This year, the biggest story involving art, by far, was that a cryptocurrency businessman paid $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction for … A banana. Which he ate. “It’s much better than other bananas,” he told the media. And that was not the stupidest thing that happened in 2024. It might not even crack the top 10. Because this was also a year when: The Olympics awarded medals for breakdancing. Fully grown adults got into fights in Target stores over Stanley brand drinking cups, which are part of the national obsession with hydration that causes many Americans to carry large-capacity beverage containers at all times, as if they’re setting off on a trek across the Sahara instead of going to Trader Joe’s. Despite multiple instances of property damage, injury and even death, expectant couples continued to insist on revealing the genders of their unborn children by blowing things up, instead of simply telling people. The number of people who identify as “influencers” continued to grow exponentially, which means that, unless we find a cure, within 10 years everybody on the planet will be trying to make a living by influencing everybody else. Hundreds of millions of Americans set all their clocks ahead in March, then set them all back in November, without having the faintest idea why.… Read more »
I love your personal connection remembrances of President Carter.
So, today I was a captive audience member in a room with Fox on the tube. They were talking about signs posted on trash cans , I think, in D.C. stating “KEEP MAGA TRASH OUT OF DC”, with a caricature of Trump wearing a Maga hat below. The panel said the posters were made to seem to be made by DC police or local government. Craig, David? Have you seen these? Didn’t Harris win D.C. with 92.5%?
Have not seen those, Dex. Will ask David, he gets out more in this cold weather.
Another Carter memory goes to his insistence on punctuality. While advancing a Mondale 1984 campaign trip to Atlanta I briefed Carter on our plans for him to greet Mondale at the airport and ride to the event. Mondale was chronically late, which always irritated Carter. “That’s fine”, Carter said about our plan. “I’ll wait 20 minutes and go straight to the event if he’s late”. I alerted Mondale’s traveling staff and they made sure the plane landed before Carter left.
Trump loses in court in the E. Jean Carroll appeal. WaPo. By Perry Stein and Shayna Jacobs A federal appeals court Monday upheld a $5 million New York civil trial jury verdict that found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. The ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Manhattan said that Trump did not demonstrate that the district court “erred in any of the challenged rulings.” In May 2023, jurors determined that Carroll had sufficiently proved she was sexually abused in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s after a chance encounter with Trump. The jury also found that Trump defamed Carroll years later on social media, after she publicly accused him of rape. The jury awarded Carroll a total of $5 million. Trump appealed that decision, arguing that Judge Lewis A. Kaplan admitted evidence in trial that he should not have, including an “Access Hollywood” recording, first reported on by The Washington Post in 2016, in which Trump talks in graphic terms about grabbing women by their genitals. Trump’s team also argued that the judge wrongly allowed the jury to hear testimony from two women who alleged that Trump had sexually assaulted them. The federal panel ruled Monday that the judge’s decision to allow the jury to hear that evidence was proper and that “the district court did not abuse its discretion in making any of the… Read more »
Another Carter memory goes to his insistence on punctuality.
Craig, you just brought something full circle to me. You sparked another memory, an embarrassing one I admit: A friend of mine who was also Jimmy’s fellow Habitat Board Member had arranged for me to meet Jimmy and receive an inscribed copy of his book, Blood of Abraham. I arrived late (cranky baby as I recall.) Jimmy was perturbed, as my friend related, and did not wait. I missed the meeting. Later, I got to see him in the Board meeting, and I received the autographed book which I still treasure. But I learned the punctuality lesson the hard way which I had not fully understood the significance until today.
Sometimes I hate Texas politicians for being so 1800 about things, such as everything including slavery. Other times I hate them for their hate of anyone not lily white and male. I do hate them all the time for trying to make the population ignorant, not stupid, not fools, but lacking knowledge.
Their idiots sent the Carters a condolence card to Rosalyn Carter, she preceded Jimmy in death. A bit stupid and especially ignorant. Maybe they cannot read?
Just in case you need some good news, Mike Luck0vich, puts his political cartoons on Blue Sky. He is pretty much the last of the political cartoonists.
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-denmark-offer-buy-united-states-2006112
“‘As we have stated, Greenland is not for sale,’ a spokesperson for the Danish government said on Friday. ‘We have noted, however, that during the Trump regime pretty much everything in the United States, including its government, has most definitely been for sale.'”
“Denmark would be interested in purchasing the United States in its entirety, with the exception of its government,” the spokesperson added.
“The Danish government has announced a huge boost in defence spending for Greenland, hours after US President-elect Donald Trump repeated his desire to purchase the Arctic territory.
Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said the package was a “double digit billion amount” in krone, or at least $1.5bn (£1.2bn).
He described the timing of the announcement as an “irony of fate”. On Monday Trump said ownership and control of the huge island was an “absolute necessity” for the US.
Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, is home to a large US space facility and is strategically important for the US, lying on the shortest route from North America to Europe. It has major mineral reserves.”
https://thehill.com/policy/international/5059147-former-trump-adviser-robert-obrien-denmark-greenland-alaska/
“Former national security adviser Robert O’Brien said in a Sunday interview that Denmark should let the U.S. “buy” Greenland if it cannot defend the self-governing country, noting the territory will become increasingly important in the coming years.
In an interview on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” O’Brien described Greenland as a “highway from the Arctic all the way to North America” and noted that the autonomous country, which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, will become increasingly important as the climate warms in the coming years.”
“The Russians and Chinese are all over the Arctic,” O’Brien said. “The Kingdom of Denmark owns Greenland, and they have got an obligation to defend Greenland. And so President Trump said, ‘If you don’t defend Greenland, we will buy it and we will defend it. But we’re not going to defend it for free and let you — and not develop Greenland and not extract the minerals and oil and resources of Greenland.’”
*Not funny (but he admitted to climate change…so woke)
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/greenland-suspends-oil-exploration-because-of-climate-change
“No oil has been found yet around Greenland, but officials there had seen potentially vast reserves as a way to help Greenlanders realize their long-held dream of independence from Denmark by cutting the annual subsidy of 3.4 billion kroner ($540 million) the Danish territory receives.
Global warming means that retreating ice could uncover potential oil and mineral resources which, if successfully tapped, could dramatically change the fortunes of the semiautonomous territory of 57,000 people.
“The future does not lie in oil. The future belongs to renewable energy, and in that respect we have much more to gain,” the Greenland government said in a statement. The government said it “wants to take co-responsibility for combating the global climate crisis.”
*Ready to join the Danish resistance. lol
ps – If you’ve noticed an absence of Luigi news, it’s because corporate America had no idea how they are viewed by actual Americans. The corporate media is, again, complicit in the demise of our country.
“Walmart illegally opened bank accounts for over 1 million drivers, CFPB alleges
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Walmart and fintech company Branch Messenger for allegedly forcing more than a million delivery workers to use expensive deposit accounts to access their paychecks, the agency announced Monday.
The companies opened deposit accounts for Walmart’s drivers with their personal information, such as Social Security numbers, without authorization, according to the agency’s complaint. Walmart’s Spark Drivers, who the company classes as independent contractors who bring packages from the company’s warehouses to customers’ doorsteps, could only have their pay deposited into the Branch accounts, the complaint says. Since 2021, Walmart told workers that they could lose their jobs for not using the accounts, according to the lawsuit.
And drivers paid a combined total of $10 million in “junk fees” to transfer those wages into other bank accounts, CFPB alleges.
“Companies cannot force workers into getting paid through accounts that drain their earnings with junk fees,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement.
The lawsuit described the typical SparkDriver as “a woman, has children, does not have a college degree, and is low income.”
I would be on Jimmy’s s scheibe list; I am habitually late for everything. I never met Jimmy but when he landed in Fort Wayne to campaign in 1976, our union committee went to greet him. One guy dropped out, so my fellow Viet Nam vet buddy from work was invited, and he went. Mike had wiry hair that stuck way out on the sides and he had an eye that focussed off to the side. He wore long trench coats. When Jimmy disembarked from the aircraft, Mike strode towards him to shake his hand. The next day at work, the committeemen were laughing at how security saw this guy who looked like trouble and rushed him. No harm, Mike shook Jimmy’s hand, end of story.
Rosalynn came to my street here in Bryan, Ohio to pound nails about 12, maybe 15 years ago. They were building a new Habitat for Humanity home. Very little fanfare, but by God, she stayed for hours pounding those nails, just six lots from my house. We get the occasional celebrity here, Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. after The Teamsters got in at the candy factory, the late Celtic star John Havlicek about 47 years ago to launch a little game. Our last MLB pitcher from here retired last spring.
Jimmy Carter’s state funeral scheduled for Jan. 9 in Washington
according to wiki:
In Yiddish, a mensch or mentsh is “a person of integrity and honor”. American humorist Leo Rosten describes a mentsh as “someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. The key to being ‘a real mensch’ is nothing less than character, rectitude, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, decorous.” The term is used as a high compliment, implying the rarity and value of that individual’s qualities.
Attribution: Jimmy Carter dies at 100 by Dave Whamond, Canada, PoliticalCartoons.com
from that USnews link:
Beautiful, Pat, thank you.
My shelf of Jimmy’s books includes an engaging historical fiction novel, The Hornet’s Nest, about the Revolutionary War set in the South.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123561.The_Hornet_s_Nest
I voted for Jimmy in ‘76. I didn’t get to watch his inauguration but I heard it on the radio, being as we were in the car driving from Orlando to our new home in Houston. That day there was snow on the oranges hanging on the trees.
so glad I held on to this photo, working for him in the Cabinet Room
Perfect.
NYT: “In accordance with federal law, Mr. Biden ordered flags lowered to half-staff for the next 30 days, meaning they will still be lowered on Jan. 20, when Mr. Trump is inaugurated.”
Will Orange Adolf leave them at half staff until January 29th?
Once every two weeks during my internship in the White House Media Liaison Office I’d bring our briefing paper to Carter in the small outer office adjacent to the Oval Office that he preferred to use. With few words and seldom any questions he would scan our bios and some quotes from out-of-DC columnists, editors and reporters he was about to meet in the Cabinet Room. I was always astonished how he could recall so many particulars from that document in conversation with them, giving them the impression he knew them and regularly read their work. It was always said he had a photographic memory. I can attest that it seemed to me he surely did.
https://www.analyticsinsight.net/cryptocurrency-analytics-insight/world-liberty-financial-snapping-up-hedera-hbar-and-ripple-xrp-trumps-moves-causes-stir-in-new-presale-rollblock
“The US President-elect is set to resume office in January, but his indirect impact is already being felt in the crypto market. Two of the most impacted coins are Hedera (HBAR) and Ripple (XRP), which were recently purchased by World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a Trump-backed decentralized finance (DeFi) blockchain.”
https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/11/25/trump-world-liberty-financial-crypto-project-30-million-justin-sun-tron/
“The controversial China-born crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun has invested $30 million in President-elect Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial, making him the largest investor in the decentralized finance project.”
“The U.S. is becoming the blockchain hub, and Bitcoin owes it to @realDonaldTrump!,” Sun, the founder of the cryptocurrency firm Tron, announced in a post on X Monday. “TRON is committed to making America great again and leading innovation.” A spokesperson for Sun didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.”
*Now, tRUMPsky is a crypto-grifter. This is troubling in so many levels.
Blessed memories, Craig. Thank you for sharing.
Yep, we’re about to inaugurate an adjudicated rapist.
— 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds $5 million verdict against Trump for sexual abuse and defamation of E. Jean Carroll.. https://politi.co/400kEUC
The first time I met Jimmy Carter I had never heard of him, even though he had been governor of next-door Georgia. It was at the Democratic Midterm Convention in 1974 in Kansas City. During a chance encounter in the hotel elevator his son Chip invited me and a friend to breakfast with “my Dad, he’s running for president”. At breakfast (with several other Floridians) Jimmy talked about the embarrassment of George Wallace as the face of the party in the South, and the need to beat him in the 1976 primaries, especially in Florida. We were hooked on that idea, even though we knew so little about Carter, and went to work, even taking a semester off from college to get it done. We beat Wallace by over 50,000 votes in Florida.
Craig, I was one of the Florida voters you hooked (and converted from doom as possible life-long Republican.)
Dave Barry is in the house. WaPo. 2024 in review. How stupid was 2024? Let’s start with the art world, which over the centuries has given humanity so many beautiful, timeless masterpieces. This year, the biggest story involving art, by far, was that a cryptocurrency businessman paid $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction for … A banana. Which he ate. “It’s much better than other bananas,” he told the media. And that was not the stupidest thing that happened in 2024. It might not even crack the top 10. Because this was also a year when: The Olympics awarded medals for breakdancing. Fully grown adults got into fights in Target stores over Stanley brand drinking cups, which are part of the national obsession with hydration that causes many Americans to carry large-capacity beverage containers at all times, as if they’re setting off on a trek across the Sahara instead of going to Trader Joe’s. Despite multiple instances of property damage, injury and even death, expectant couples continued to insist on revealing the genders of their unborn children by blowing things up, instead of simply telling people. The number of people who identify as “influencers” continued to grow exponentially, which means that, unless we find a cure, within 10 years everybody on the planet will be trying to make a living by influencing everybody else. Hundreds of millions of Americans set all their clocks ahead in March, then set them all back in November, without having the faintest idea why.… Read more »
I love your personal connection remembrances of President Carter.
So, today I was a captive audience member in a room with Fox on the tube. They were talking about signs posted on trash cans , I think, in D.C. stating “KEEP MAGA TRASH OUT OF DC”, with a caricature of Trump wearing a Maga hat below. The panel said the posters were made to seem to be made by DC police or local government. Craig, David? Have you seen these? Didn’t Harris win D.C. with 92.5%?
Have not seen those, Dex. Will ask David, he gets out more in this cold weather.
Another Carter memory goes to his insistence on punctuality. While advancing a Mondale 1984 campaign trip to Atlanta I briefed Carter on our plans for him to greet Mondale at the airport and ride to the event. Mondale was chronically late, which always irritated Carter. “That’s fine”, Carter said about our plan. “I’ll wait 20 minutes and go straight to the event if he’s late”. I alerted Mondale’s traveling staff and they made sure the plane landed before Carter left.
today’s meme…
Trump loses in court in the E. Jean Carroll appeal. WaPo. By Perry Stein and Shayna Jacobs A federal appeals court Monday upheld a $5 million New York civil trial jury verdict that found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. The ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Manhattan said that Trump did not demonstrate that the district court “erred in any of the challenged rulings.” In May 2023, jurors determined that Carroll had sufficiently proved she was sexually abused in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s after a chance encounter with Trump. The jury also found that Trump defamed Carroll years later on social media, after she publicly accused him of rape. The jury awarded Carroll a total of $5 million. Trump appealed that decision, arguing that Judge Lewis A. Kaplan admitted evidence in trial that he should not have, including an “Access Hollywood” recording, first reported on by The Washington Post in 2016, in which Trump talks in graphic terms about grabbing women by their genitals. Trump’s team also argued that the judge wrongly allowed the jury to hear testimony from two women who alleged that Trump had sexually assaulted them. The federal panel ruled Monday that the judge’s decision to allow the jury to hear that evidence was proper and that “the district court did not abuse its discretion in making any of the… Read more »
Craig, you just brought something full circle to me. You sparked another memory, an embarrassing one I admit: A friend of mine who was also Jimmy’s fellow Habitat Board Member had arranged for me to meet Jimmy and receive an inscribed copy of his book, Blood of Abraham. I arrived late (cranky baby as I recall.) Jimmy was perturbed, as my friend related, and did not wait. I missed the meeting. Later, I got to see him in the Board meeting, and I received the autographed book which I still treasure. But I learned the punctuality lesson the hard way which I had not fully understood the significance until today.
Sometimes I hate Texas politicians for being so 1800 about things, such as everything including slavery. Other times I hate them for their hate of anyone not lily white and male. I do hate them all the time for trying to make the population ignorant, not stupid, not fools, but lacking knowledge.
Their idiots sent the Carters a condolence card to Rosalyn Carter, she preceded Jimmy in death. A bit stupid and especially ignorant. Maybe they cannot read?
Ha. Yes Ivy you got a sample. And when he was really mad there was a little vein on his temple that you could see throbbing. Could be very scary.
Just in case you need some good news, Mike Luck0vich, puts his political cartoons on Blue Sky. He is pretty much the last of the political cartoonists.
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-denmark-offer-buy-united-states-2006112
“‘As we have stated, Greenland is not for sale,’ a spokesperson for the Danish government said on Friday. ‘We have noted, however, that during the Trump regime pretty much everything in the United States, including its government, has most definitely been for sale.'”
“Denmark would be interested in purchasing the United States in its entirety, with the exception of its government,” the spokesperson added.
*Danish humor
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgzl19n9eko
“The Danish government has announced a huge boost in defence spending for Greenland, hours after US President-elect Donald Trump repeated his desire to purchase the Arctic territory.
Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said the package was a “double digit billion amount” in krone, or at least $1.5bn (£1.2bn).
He described the timing of the announcement as an “irony of fate”. On Monday Trump said ownership and control of the huge island was an “absolute necessity” for the US.
Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, is home to a large US space facility and is strategically important for the US, lying on the shortest route from North America to Europe. It has major mineral reserves.”
*Gas/oil/Putin
https://thehill.com/policy/international/5059147-former-trump-adviser-robert-obrien-denmark-greenland-alaska/
“Former national security adviser Robert O’Brien said in a Sunday interview that Denmark should let the U.S. “buy” Greenland if it cannot defend the self-governing country, noting the territory will become increasingly important in the coming years.
In an interview on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” O’Brien described Greenland as a “highway from the Arctic all the way to North America” and noted that the autonomous country, which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, will become increasingly important as the climate warms in the coming years.”
“The Russians and Chinese are all over the Arctic,” O’Brien said. “The Kingdom of Denmark owns Greenland, and they have got an obligation to defend Greenland. And so President Trump said, ‘If you don’t defend Greenland, we will buy it and we will defend it. But we’re not going to defend it for free and let you — and not develop Greenland and not extract the minerals and oil and resources of Greenland.’”
*Not funny (but he admitted to climate change…so woke)
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/greenland-suspends-oil-exploration-because-of-climate-change
“No oil has been found yet around Greenland, but officials there had seen potentially vast reserves as a way to help Greenlanders realize their long-held dream of independence from Denmark by cutting the annual subsidy of 3.4 billion kroner ($540 million) the Danish territory receives.
Global warming means that retreating ice could uncover potential oil and mineral resources which, if successfully tapped, could dramatically change the fortunes of the semiautonomous territory of 57,000 people.
“The future does not lie in oil. The future belongs to renewable energy, and in that respect we have much more to gain,” the Greenland government said in a statement. The government said it “wants to take co-responsibility for combating the global climate crisis.”
*Ready to join the Danish resistance. lol
ps – If you’ve noticed an absence of Luigi news, it’s because corporate America had no idea how they are viewed by actual Americans. The corporate media is, again, complicit in the demise of our country.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/23/business/walmart-branch-cfpb-lawsuit/index.html
“Walmart illegally opened bank accounts for over 1 million drivers, CFPB alleges
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Walmart and fintech company Branch Messenger for allegedly forcing more than a million delivery workers to use expensive deposit accounts to access their paychecks, the agency announced Monday.
The companies opened deposit accounts for Walmart’s drivers with their personal information, such as Social Security numbers, without authorization, according to the agency’s complaint. Walmart’s Spark Drivers, who the company classes as independent contractors who bring packages from the company’s warehouses to customers’ doorsteps, could only have their pay deposited into the Branch accounts, the complaint says. Since 2021, Walmart told workers that they could lose their jobs for not using the accounts, according to the lawsuit.
And drivers paid a combined total of $10 million in “junk fees” to transfer those wages into other bank accounts, CFPB alleges.
“Companies cannot force workers into getting paid through accounts that drain their earnings with junk fees,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement.
The lawsuit described the typical Spark Driver as “a woman, has children, does not have a college degree, and is low income.”
*Not funny and not surprised.
I would be on Jimmy’s s scheibe list; I am habitually late for everything. I never met Jimmy but when he landed in Fort Wayne to campaign in 1976, our union committee went to greet him. One guy dropped out, so my fellow Viet Nam vet buddy from work was invited, and he went. Mike had wiry hair that stuck way out on the sides and he had an eye that focussed off to the side. He wore long trench coats. When Jimmy disembarked from the aircraft, Mike strode towards him to shake his hand. The next day at work, the committeemen were laughing at how security saw this guy who looked like trouble and rushed him. No harm, Mike shook Jimmy’s hand, end of story.
Rosalynn came to my street here in Bryan, Ohio to pound nails about 12, maybe 15 years ago. They were building a new Habitat for Humanity home. Very little fanfare, but by God, she stayed for hours pounding those nails, just six lots from my house. We get the occasional celebrity here, Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. after The Teamsters got in at the candy factory, the late Celtic star John Havlicek about 47 years ago to launch a little game. Our last MLB pitcher from here retired last spring.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/30/greg-abbott-jimmy-carter-rosalynn-condolences
“Greg Abbott sent condolences to Jimmy Carter’s wife – who had been dead a year”
*Probably the least stupid thing he’s done all year.
The timing of losing such a decent man who was POTUS, with the return of the grift-tator to that same office, might be the wake-up call some need.
NEW THREAD by Craig our fearless leader