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From one perspective, Elon Musk is liberals' dream entrepreneur. He's a science nerd and a romantic visionary in the progressive firmament of California. He's the man who not only brought electric cars back from the dead, but made them cool. Tesla, the car company Musk founded, is gearing up for mass-production of a $35,000 model, which hopes to bring his vision for a climate-change-fighting car to the masses.

But some of Musk's employees tell a different story.

Recent reports in The Daily Beast and The Guardian tell of workers enduring tough conditions, long hours, and frequent injuries in Tesla's famous plant in Fremont, California. Since 2014, ambulances reportedly rushed there over 100 times to deal with "fainting spells, dizziness, seizures, abnormal breathing, and chest pains, according to incident reports obtained by The Guardian. Hundreds more were called for injuries and other medical issues." Unsurprisingly, some of these same workers are pushing to unionize Tesla's workforce, with the support of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) union.

Musk and Tesla's management have staunchly resisted and criticized that idea.

The law forbids employers from directly threatening or retaliating against employees for supporting a union drive. But owners and management are still perfectly free to express their opinions to workers. Given the resources they wield and their control over the workplace floor as a social space where workers talk to each other this anti-union messaging can still have pretty overwhelming force. "Every time we go out there and try to hand out flyers, security comes and talks to us for 20 to 30 minutes, takes our badges, makes sure we're employees of the factory," Alan Ochoa, a pro-union Tesla worker, told The Daily Beast. "Sometimes people from HR come, and they don't hold back on their opinions on the matter."

The dispute has also spilled over into whether Tesla broke the law. The UAW has filed four complaints against Tesla, claiming it violated the National Labor Relations Act by "intimidating [and] creating the appearance of surveillance and conducting surveillance on [employees] and others for their union activities and/or union sentiments," and for instruct[ing] employees that they were not allowed to pass out any literature unless it was pre-approved by the employer." The company has denied the charges as "entirely without merit."

This murky he-said-she-said quality is pretty common in disputes between labor and management/ownership, and in Tesla's own internal battle.

Back in February, a pro-union worker named Jose Moran wrote a blog post detailing how long work hours, frequent injuries, and mandatory overtime are still a big problem at Tesla. The post apparently stung Musk enough that he personally issued a point-by-point rebuttal in a long company email.

For instance, The American Prospect reported that wages at the factory run from $17 to $21 an hour quite a bit less than the national average of $29.04 for auto-manufacturing. That Tesla employees often have to deal with California's sky-high costs-of-living only exacerbates the problem. The company counters that it shares stock with employees, and that total compensation is actually better than the industry average when the stock is factored in. "A Tesla team member earned between $70,000 and $100,000 more in total compensation than the employees at other U.S. auto companies!" Musk wrote in his response to Moran. The workers counter that the stock doesn't fully vest until they've put in at least four years of work a problem when your bills arrive on a monthly basis.

Then there's the matter of long hours and workplace injuries. One thing Musk and everyone else seems to agree on is that the problems were definitely bad several years ago. Employees used to put in 14-hour days, but policy changes and the hiring of a third shift eventually cut that down to eight hours. (Musk even mentioned that he slept on the factory floor in a sleeping bag in 2016 as a show of solidarity.)

A study commissioned by pro-union workers, drawing on Bureau of Labor Statistic data, found that Tesla had an injury rate 31 percent higher than the industry's average in 2015 the last year for which comprehensive data is available. Its serious injury rate was 103 percent higher. A Tesla spokesperson responded that "we may have had some challenges in the past," but safety improvements cut injuries by 30 percent in 2016. The spokesperson also said that as of the first quarter of 2017, the company's total injury rate was 32 percent better than the industry average.

Pro-union critics are skeptical, saying the data for 2016 and 2017 is too preliminary to be fully trustworthy.

Tesla workers are also reportedly sometimes put on light duty to accommodate their injuries and ongoing pain. But this comes with lower pay: an effective even if arguably unintentional punishment for bringing up the injury in the first place.

Finally, there's the looming production grind needed to meet the massive order list for Tesla's newest model, which could drive the company's injury rate and hours back up again: "There's no realistic way than going up through 12 hours," said Tesla employee Michael Sanchez.

The point here is not to try and reach some objective determination as to who's right and who's wrong. Both sides have relatable stories. Indeed, they're flip sides of the same coin: They show how the strengths of the tech visionary can also be their great weakness. The pro-union workers see themselves as being driven into work hours and conditions beyond the bounds of decency by Musk's vision for the future. Musk views himself as a scrappy entrepreneur, balancing on razor-thin finances, trying to break into a sclerotic industry dominated by massive players, all in the name of saving the planet.

But perhaps the irresolvable Rashomon-esque nature of the dispute is itself arguably the best case for unionization. We're all human, none of us are perfect, and we all tell the story of our experiences through inevitably biased lenses. If Musk and his workers can tell such different tales about the evolution of the same company, is that not evidence they should all have a say in setting the terms by which that company operates?

There was a time, decades ago, when the American left and the labor movement aimed to make the workplace such a democratic space. Today, that dream is mostly dead: That ownership and management give orders, and employees obey, is basically taken as the natural order of things.

In some ways, this can be a boon for liberalism. As Google recently demonstrated, unquestioned authority can be an effective tool for enforcing progressive social norms. Or in Musk's case, an effective tool for driving forward the progressive dream of a green economy reliant on zero-carbon-emitting electric cars. These are both entirely worthy goals. But should liberals wield the power of the boss in pursuing them?

As discontent mounts against inequality and stagnation, and against the immense power that employers hold over their workers the old dream will almost certainly have to be resurrected. In that way, Elon Musk sits at ground zero for a coming reckoning within American liberalism.

Read more here:
Should liberals support an electric car company that's anti-union? - The Week Magazine

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Posted: Aug 14, 2017 12:01 AM

I wish I could say that its a shock that someone died in Charlottesville, but Ive been predicting just this sort of thing in radio appearances for months. The liberal media is dying to blame it all on Donald Trump, but it should look in the mirror.

To begin with, the liberal media is almost entirely responsible for growing the Alt-Right merger of hate groups and internet trolls. Most people are well aware of the stifling political correctness that reached an apex under Barack Obama. People are sick and tired of being attacked and scolded by the humorless left-wing thought police every time they stray from the latest liberal doctrine. That created a large group of people who enjoyed tweaking social justice warriors and some of them realized the easiest way to do that was with racial slurs. Every time some doofus leaves a noose on a college campus or says the N-word, its treated like a national crisis. If youre an anonymous troll who enjoys getting people to react to everything you say, thats a FEATURE, not a bug. All you have to do is say something racially offensive and all these people who studiously try to ignore you will go out of their minds.

That racial element gave the Nazis, white supremacists and KKK mouth-breathers a way to connect with the more socially adept trolls making the Pepe the Frog memes. Of course, the media liberals fueled them as well with their hypocrisy. They painted EVERY white supporter of Donald Trump or the Republican Party as a racist even as they ignored and defended the vicious anti-white rhetoric that has become commonplace on the Left. Just to give you a quick example of that, there was a hashtag that trended on Twitter after the attack called #ThisIsNotUS. It started out as a way for white liberals to virtue signal, but it quickly turned into an all too typical attack on white people, America and Trump voters. Here are some of the most popular comments from the hashtag

#ThisIsNotUs Then who is it? 63% of white men & 53% of white women voted for KKK-endorsed Trump. The majority of EVERY OTHER ETHNICITY didnt

If you are white and you are trying to say #ThisIsNotUs you are part of the problem.

If you're earnestly tweeting #ThisIsNotUS, know that the you might as well have been one of the white supremacists walking w/ tiki torches.

Every white person that tweets #ThisIsNotUs is being complicit in not addressing the rampant racism and bigotry that in their community

#ThisIsNotUS? Easy to say so. Unfortunately you can't have the Black, Brown, Asian, Jewish, Muslim or LGTBQ "experience" to know #THISISYOU

Gaga, prime example of a white woman using tag #ThisIsNotUs like this country wasnt built on slavery & racism. THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN AmeriKa

#ThisIsNotUs is how white people try to absolve themselves from their complicity in white supremacy; it v much is you, your inaction fuels it

The biggest talking point white supremacists have are comments like these. Would that be true if the mainstream media actually treated these comments with the same sort of contempt it has for the Alt-Right?

Nope.

Yet these sort of comments are MAINSTREAM on the Left. Let me repeat that. They are MAINSTREAM on the Left.

On the other hand, white supremacists are nothing on the Right. David Duke is a joke. Richard Spencer? Let me tell you a little story about Richard Spencer. I was walking around CPAC and noticed an enormous gaggle of media surrounding someone I didnt recognize, who didnt seem to be drawing a crowd of regular attendees. As it turns out, the massive group of media people werent following a big name. They were following Richard Spencer, who was later kicked out of the conference, presumably because the organizers never wanted him there in the first place.

Yet Richard Spencer, like David Duke before him, is treated like some kind of rock star by the media liberals even though hes a nobody in the conservative movement. Why? Because they dont care about conservative opinion. They dont care about conservative views. They care about creating propaganda that paints the Right as a bunch of hood-wearing, Nazi-saluting scumbags. So, they treat Richard Spencer like a rock star.

This creates a sort of Kim Kardashian effect. Ninety five percent of any influence Spencer has comes from the fact that anything he does is a big deal to the media. Why were Spencer and Duke able to gather even 500 Tiki torch-waving idiots in Charlottesville? Because the media would cover everything they did with bated breath. It gave them a chance to feel important, to feel like they were making an impact. In fact, white supremacists have started to believe their own BS because they keep hearing it from the media. After fighting with Richard Spencer on Twitter, I still remember one of his fans claiming that white supremacists were an essential part of Trump getting elected. My response was.

Yeah, you guys made a bunch of Holocaust memes & called people cucksand then you're all....I'm helping.

The hardcore racists out there are pariahs everywhere except in the mainstream media, where theyre treated as incredibly important.

On the other hand, the same mainstream media that has elevated the Alt-Right has been silent as violence has increasingly become a mainstay at liberal protests, including the counter-protest of this event. A few shops getting looted or people getting hurt doesnt stop the media from describing a liberal event as a peaceful protest. Even the counter-protests in Charlottesville were widely described as peaceful. Yet, protesters chanted From the Midwest to the South, punch a Nazi in the mouth, a female reporter was punched by one of those counter-protesters, the organizer of the rally was hit, and other people were attacked. Thats not peaceful. Thats something LIBERAL POLITICIANS should be asked to condemn.

In other words, Nazi and KKK members are HORRIBLE. The violent liberal counter-protesters are ALSO horrible. James Alex Fields, Jr? Who appears to have marched at the rally before plowing into a crowd? I condemn what he did. I also condemn the Bernie supporter who shot up a congressional Republican softball game. Additionally, I will condemn the next person on the Left or the Right who kills someone over politics, which seems inevitable when you have opposing sides carrying shields and weapons to political rallies. Those condemnations dont make a damn bit of difference as long as the liberal media keeps elevating white supremacists and excusing the violence of the Alt-Left. Im genuinely sorry people are dying at political rallies, but it would be surprising if the death at Charlottesville were the last one. Their blood will be on the hands of the liberal media.

Link:
How the Liberal Media Created Charlottesville - Townhall

ATLANTA Sen. Elizabeth Warren used a speech to a grass-roots conference Saturday to take direct aim at Democrats diminished moderate wing, ridiculing Clinton-era policies and jubilantly proclaiming that liberals had taken control of the party.

While not invoking former President Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton by name, Warren sent an unambiguous message that she believes the Clinton effort to push Democrats toward the political center should be relegated to history.

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The Democratic Party isnt going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime bill, she said, highlighting measures Bill Clinton signed into law as president that are reviled by much of the left. It is not going to happen.

Yet Warren, D-Mass., who is widely thought to be considering running for president in 2020, noted to about 1,000 activists here for the yearly Netroots Nation meeting that they hardly needed to worry about the party shifting to the middle as it did in the 1990s. Liberals, she said, have taken charge.

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We are not the gate-crashers of todays Democratic Party, Warren said, invoking a term first used to describe the liberal blogosphere that emerged a decade ago. We are not a wing of todays Democratic Party. We are the heart and soul of todays Democratic Party.

Warrens five-day trip started in Poland, where she met with US and Polish officials and had dinner with a unit of Army reservists from Brockton.

Despite Warrens words, deep divisions remain in the Democratic Party in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential campaign. There is the familiar center-versus-liberal divide as well as an increasingly animated clash between economic-focused activists on the far left and liberals driven more by issues of race, gender and identity.

While Warren first rose to stardom on the left because of her populist jeremiads against concentrated economic power, she sought to use her remarks in Atlanta to broaden her indictment against what she calls a rigged system. Expanding her signature attacks on Wall Street and its political influence, she said women, African-Americans, undocumented immigrants and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people were all suffering from fundamental inequities.

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Warren lampooned a recent New York Times opinion article, Back to the Center, Democrats, by Mark Penn, a onetime Clinton strategist, and Andrew Stein, a former New York City Council president. The path forward is to go back to locking up nonviolent drug offenders and ripping more holes in our economic safety net, she said of their argument.

Still, Warren implored the crowd not to push others out of the movement.

If were going to be the people who lead the Democratic Party back from the wilderness and lead our country out of this dark time, then we cant waste energy arguing about whose issue matters more or who in our alliance should be voted off the island, she said, drawing applause.

The annual Netroots gathering began in 2006 when it was called YearlyKos and sponsored by the Daily Kos blog. But it has grown in scale, mirroring the rise of liberals in the party.

The conference has also become a proving ground for would-be Democratic presidential candidates. Warren did little to dissuade a friendly crowd from thinking she, too, was eyeing a White House run.

Recalling the moment this year when Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, rebuked her for not following Senate rules and said, nevertheless she persisted Warren repeated the line that has become a rallying cry for her. When she vowed to the crowd in Atlanta that she would persist, chants of Warren 2020 rose up.

Read the original:
Liberals are the 'heart and soul' of Democratic Party, Warren says - The Boston Globe

Three people are dead and at least 34 injured after Unite the Right brought frenetic scenes and deadly violence to Charlottesville, Virginia. An estimated 500 white supremacists joined the rally, which supposedly was organized to protest the removal of Confederate monuments across Southern states. The rhetoric employed by the organizers clearly indicates that the gathering had other ambitions as well.

Its about white genocide. Its about the replacement of our people, culturally and ethnically, Jason Kessler told his followers on Periscope before the rally. Speaking at Unite the Right, David Duke stated: We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. Thats what we believed in, thats why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said hes going to take our country back, and thats what we gotta do.

At the rally itself, racist chants and sieg heils abounded. By most reports, the most popular incantation was blood and soil (from the German blut und boden). Originating in late 19th century Germany as an evocation of ultranationalist sentiment, it became incorporated into Nazi propaganda, where it was utilized to glorify pure German countryfolk who had a unique kinship with the land.

At the Friday evening tiki torch-bearing congregation at the Lee monument, the theme was the Richard Spencer shibboleth we will not be replaced.

No, the poison is not very hard to put together. Unite the Right was the official pitch of American fascists of all shades to become part of mainstream politics. It was the affirmation of the American far-right that they are no longer willing to be small fry content with furtive cross burnings and Nazi salutes. They want to be recognized as a national movement. They want political legitimacy.

Neither is it any coincidence that this moment has come during the presidency of Donald Trump. Even though they gained momentum by riding the tide of racist backlash during the tenure of Americas first black President, it was not until Trump entered the White House that they dared to stake their claim. Not only was Donald Trumps campaign rife with thinly veiled white nationalist rhetoric, his cabinet contains at least two men who belong firmly in the far right. Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka are two of the primary architects of the alt-right narrative since their days together at the Breitbart News Network.

It is not just that white supremacists see in the Trump administrations xenophobia and ultranationalism a coded affirmation of their fascist dreams. The fact is that Breitbart, Trump and many Republicans have themselves inspired new white supremacy among Americans. Their demonization of minorities, their denial of systemic racism and their blaming of immigrants and liberals for the misery of the working class amount to nothing less than soft-core white supremacy.

Today is a moment of reckoning for America. Fascism has reared its vile head, and prejudices that many had thought were either extinct or dormant are being shouted with pride and gusto. Right-wing militancy and violence continue to be on the rise. There is an administration in charge that shows zero motivation to frankly condemn or sever itself cleanly from white supremacy. Either because that would interfere with its raison dtre of liberal-hating or perhaps because it contains sympathizers with this ideology.

Most poignantly, though, this is a moment of reckoning for that cohort of liberals who choose to sit on the moral fence, looking down their noses at both left and right. That navel-gazing legion that prides itself for defending the free speech rights of neo-Nazis and equates the regressive left with the alt-right. That hypocritical, cowardly, egocentric nonsense will no longer stand.

Enough of the tripe about the left being more antisemitic than the right, of the sniveling, intellectually dishonest refrains of the lefts soft bigotry of low expectations. It is high time that it was clearly and loudly pointed out that there is no longer any daylight between the rhetoric of the alt-right and left-hating liberals. From regressive left to hard left and from SJW to PC police, this confusion of tongues with the alt-right is a testament to the neurosis of freeze peach liberals.

The fact is, economic ideology and the scandalous Democratic primaries have already created much distance between centrist liberals and the left. The fact is that whether it is fighting immigration bans, police brutality or fascism, the left has shown it is able and willing. It is fence-sitting liberals that must prove their moral integrity and distinguish themselves from the right.

Follow this link:
Charlottesville Is A Moment Of Reckoning Especially For Fence-Sitting Liberals - HuffPost

Psychology professor Jordan Peterson said that liberals excelled in openness and conservatives excelled in conscientiousness while speaking with Rob Shimshock on The Shimshock Show.

WATCH:

The University of Toronto professor argued that liberals display the personality trait of openness, which he linked to an affinity for abstraction and aesthetics. Meanwhile, he posited that conservatives demonstrate conscientiousness, which makes them good at administrating but not creating.

Alot of what determines your political orientation is biological temperament, said Peterson, outlining liberal openness and conservative conscientiousness. Each of those different temperamental types needs the other type so economically speaking, for example, we need liberals to start businesses, and we need conservatives to run them.

The whole point of a democracy is to continue the dialogue between people of different temperamental types so that we dont move so far to the right that everything becomes encapsulated in stone and doesnt move, or so far to the left that everything dissolves in [a] kind of mealy-mouthed chaos, said the professor. The only way that you can navigate between those two shoals is through discussion, which is why free speech is such an important value.

Peterson also discussed the political trajectory of Canada under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, arguing that the political spectrum in the country is shifted to the left, relative to that of the U.S.(RELATED: Dr. Jordan Peterson Talks New Website To Detect Neo-Marxist Courses)

The Liberal party in Canada has tilted very strongly to the left, which isnt what the electorate expected because they wouldve voted for the NDP the socialist party if they wanted the left-leaning party, said Peterson. So they got a wolf in sheeps clothing.

The full interview can be viewed here.

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Dr. Jordan Peterson Talks Personality Differences Between Liberals And Conservatives [VIDEO] - The Daily Caller