Their eFilfillment plans is what I was referring to their logistics being set up all wrong, but we can get into the weeds on the details of backhaul, linehaul, empty trailers and such quickly there.
The bleeding is real. And not just managers, Wal-Mart for decades was the standard in Drivers, it was very hard to get in and they took a lot of pride in having the best fleet guys. And they are losing that group through retirements, attrition, and many are not liking the current direction. You cant replace a 1,2, or 3 million mile driver and maintain that safety and performance record.
That is a huge factor. It is also a point of concern for me, as the ruling party ran and was elected on a reconciliation platform while that scandal crippled opposition. I'm not an expert, but clearly the current SK leadership was desiring an agreement for some time. My hope is this is all legitimate and profitable for everyone, but I worry promises were made to DPRK in order for the South, and us, to claim a hollow victory.
My passenger side mirror cover is broken right now from a guy pulling across it while I wasn't even in it. My neighborhood is pretty self enclosed, but that also means the kids and also some adults are a bit braver than they should be so you have to be even more vigilant in some ways. And in town is worse. I mindlessly still sometimes do a walkaround of the car before getting in just out of muscle memory sometimes. Habits.
Comments was invented for windmill tilting, so tilt away. I have been accused of being anti-union but I am not, I am anti what many unions in America have become, but that is another topic for another day.
Your statement here has real validity:
FWIW my objections mostly have to do with lower-level “managers” making almost no money and with no real power or job security are pressured and threatened into misdoings that the company tries to deny, in order for the company to have their cake and eat it too”.
Especially in a larger company, lower level manager is an awful place to be in. There is of course something to be said for starting out and working your way up, but it is a legitimate criticism that too often they are rode to death (mostly figuratively) for the convience and
cost effectiveness of a company. My first civilian job after the service is a perfect example: I took it knowing it was poor situation but needed to start somewhere (I was there relatively briefly until a much better job came along which I took) but as a salaried manager at a national company, I was making less money than the most of the 200+ people I was supervising, and the more senior guys made almost twice as much. Incredibly high pace at that job, as the new guy working weekends and odd hours as need, and constant pressure to perform. This is not a complaint, frankly I'm one of those twisted people that thrive in a pressure environment, and while not enjoyable I leveraged it into a much better job at one of the larger transportation companies in short order. To your point, its easy to see how such an situation can be leveraged and abused for wrongdoing, especially with a young or straight out of college kid that isn't savy to the darker parts of business to avoid.
@mike-dwyer I'll ask you then, is it worth writing up the rise and fall of Wal-Mart? Not original, many people have done it. The Wal-Mart logistical model was literally the one in the textbooks taking transportation management courses. But now it is an infrastructure that is built exactly opposite to what they need, and is tying their hands behind their back when they need to be able to fight the Amazons of the world. I wonder the wider appeal of it beyond boxkickers and loggies? And I welcome any conversation, anytime.
There a point I will make when it comes to Wal-Mart/Amazon and the narrative that was on the first and is now being applied to the later. And Lets stipulate any mistreatment of any worker should be dealt with swiftly. (Full disclosure, I briefly worked at Wal-Mart in 99-2000 a job I enjoyed so much I joined the military to get out of there, and I've peripherally been involved, and at one point interviewed with, Amazon in 2013 when they were doing some mass logistical hiring. I turned the offer down due to not wanting to move and live where the employment would have been. FWIW)
Now that we got that out of the way. Wal-Mart and Amazon share two core sins to some folks that make them a target: They are nearly monopolizing their sectors with immense profits, and they are non-union employers. Where you fall on those two issues usually affects your view of the overall company. So the biggest companies also become the touchpoints for a lot of issues, like income disparity (CEO to worker pay, etc) workers rights, collective bargaining, union vs non-union, employee healthcare, the list goes on and on. So all the advocates for all those issues naturally turn their attention to the biggest target. If you are a union advocate, every instance of worker mistreatment will get attention at the non-union company. If you are advocating for income equality, CEO to average salary ratio gets highlighted. And so on. Saying all that, drag Amazon, Wal-Mart, and anyone else who mistreats their workers, and prosecute them where applicable if they violate OSHA and other regulations and rightly so. But we should also be discerning in when some have an agenda to promote. Warehouse work, which I've done at a high paced level, is never easy; its hard, hard work at a fast pace with deadlines and pressure. The workers should be compensated accordingly and given as safe as possible an environment to do so in. But it can always be described as various shades of "unfair" and unpleasant cause it is.
Most of the people claiming Burkean principles never read Burke. Its a problem throughout politics and why tribalism is an issue, people just flock to a banner and adapt the lingo without actually studying or thinking through positions, they just want into the group.
I digress. Anyway. Trump absolutely played to the lowest common denominator with some of his rhetoric. There is a ratio to be found in the data of the more culturally and economically disaffected you are, or perceive yourself to be, the stronger the support. But this speaks far more to a savior complex than actual policy or ideology preference. In analyzing Trump supporters, especially his hard core base, we need to be careful applying some overriding political lessons when a lot of it just straight hero worship, whatever political label gets applied to it.
Wal-Mart is dying. I will get around to writing up a long post on it (I'm a transport/logistics guy by trade so I assume people may not be interested in such things like I am) at some point but their logistics system that made them the behemoth they are now, is now the same things that is strangling them to death without any way to fix it, far more than just E-commerce eating into their sales.
Having said that, it is interesting that the language and criticisms of Amazon seem to be coming from the exact same playbook used against Wal-Mart, almost verbatim.
FDR lead the nation in prayer as part of his D-Day announcement. Can you imagine a president doing that today. Also one of the all-time great presidential speeches that isn't talked about enough. If you haven't you should go listen to it.
This is an interesting comment. Your final statement is correct it is an attention addiction thing. Reagan was a master communicator in the medium of his day, first on radio. People forget he did radio commentaries for years before becoming governor and it honed his messaging and presentation which later translated well to TV. Trumps mediums of first reality TV and now Twitter especially, wasn't him honing his delivery and message as much as him filtering out to the world the image and brand he wanted them to see. He knows he can throw a grenade into the news cycle anytime he wants, a more destructive version of the Obama-era "stray voltage" theory. Again a lot of Trump falls on the press when blame is to be laid out, first in the breathless wall to wall coverage during the campaign and now just chasing his morning tweets and reporting, repeating, and panel discussing those tweets all day instead of actually, you know, reporting on things.
I think Romney really broke her, she took a lot of flack on that from the right and it probably pushed her the way she was already leaning. I wish her no ill-will and read her work, but there was definitely a change.
I get the idea. How many people do you think live in that "world", or as you put "Ostensibly it was race-neutral" in their thinking? There are racist people with evil intentions, this is true. The far larger number of people, there are prejudices. It is an important distinction as racism is wicked and evil, whereas prejudice is born out of ignorance. We should be slow to attribute every prejudice to evil without a chance to show a different way. To be fair, a liberal va-va-vooms Christina Hendrix Joan character just as much as a conservative, libertatian, or moderate is prone to do. I have seen, as I'm sure you have, awful, vitriolic homophobic statements from people who profess to be LGBT tolerant. Hypocrisy comes from all places. Thus I take people as they come and try my best not to monolith them into blocks of labels with plyable meanings. There is no polar binary with people, we cannot treat them as such either in practice or theory. Even if they support Trump.
If you are in a substantially Blue-leaning area, you may not have a lot of day to day contact with Trump supporters, but Trump himself, and a lot of his more loathsome boosters on (especially) Fox News will still routinely impinge on your awareness.
This is a sentiment I hear over and over again from my friends that are left leaning/progressive. It's not a perception without merit. Trump-and he should be damned for it though the seperation from Bannon seems to have purged this fact from memory-absolutely allowed the perception that he was championing the Breitbart crowd. In practicum he was lying to them as much as he was lying to conservatives about supporting their beliefs. But he escaped any accountability for aligning with Bannon and company in the first place. I understand the charicature that projects onto the right. And "nevertrump" has become another one of those terms like fake news that means whatever the user intends it to mean, but there was a large amount of conservatives/moderates/libertarians that didnt vote for or support Trump and try to call balls and strikes on his presidency.
Trump is killing the GOP, but its the GOP's own fault for being such a hollow vapid thing that someone like Trump can wear its carcass and claim leadership of it. Their own fault. Dem's shouldn't gloat too much, they have their own inter-party civil war that is unresolved and the next election could very well reignite.
Conservativism is not a movement of white supremacy. And no side has shown any qualms about not "looting the treasury". Trump, at best, played a lot of footsie and wink-wink with the scum of the Alt-right (or whatever they are calling themselves this week), Bannon, ect and should be called out on it, and was by some conservatives, though I grant you not enough to their own shame. But the wannabe Nazism of those tiki-torch outcasts are not any more representative of conservatism than the rioting anarchist of Antifa are of the greater left when they are destroying property and causing mayhem. Trump showed people would abandon a lot of what they said they believed in order to "win" and follow a crowd. It's not a coalition of ideology Trump has, its a personality cult, projecting what you want to believe on a celebrity, and enough people lodged an "F the system" vote to go along with the sycophants to get him elected.
Interesting you mention Rubin, there was actually some notice this past week when they reworked her bio to "covering conservative" instead of being one, with many speculating that very same thing.
Tr4: Its probably a laughable thing, but to American's who have never visited the Netherlands or other countries that are densely packed in the urban areas and very bicycle dependent it's just impossible to visualize this. Most of American construction has been built after roads were laid down, where in cities like Amsterdam, Haarlem (my favorite of the Dutch cities), Rotterdam, ect. roads are being shoe-horned into cities never designed for them. Now add a bike lane and that space is even tighter. In most of Europe cyclist have absolute right of way in all circumstances, and hitting one in any form is criminal.
I agree that Reagan is overly deified to the point of being perceived flawless by the right, but the comparison of him and Trump does not hold up very well. Though an actor, Reagan had also been a labor union head, twice elected Governor of California, and won the Presidency on his 3rd try. From his conversion to the Republican party in 1962, whatever you thought of his beliefs he was consistent in expressing them through the rest of his life. Trump, though registered as a Republican, found his right-leaning stances and rhetoric about 5 minutes before his Presidential campaign as a strategy more than a conviction.
The initial charge that Trump is not the Iconoclast he is presented is accurate and fair. We have 69 years of book on Trump. He is what he does, not what he says. He donated and influenced politicians of both parties. He wielded government and law to the advancement of his business concerns and bankruptcy to shield himself from the failure. He will never "drain the swap" as is inanely repeated, because that is exactly the eco-system he needs to operate in.
As with a lot of these stories, the disturbing aspect is the "everyone knew for years" part that only seems to be know to everyone once the predatory is safely at arms link or no longer of use to certain people. Got a quick post up so didn't include it, but Cosby's behavior in court does not lead to contrition at all, rather the opposite; someone who still thinks they should get away with it all. I doubt this story is done.
There is a lot of truth to what you say. And frankly, positions such as that of working in White House are valued specifically for the leeway and perks that come with it. Same is true in high commands, pentagon and other postings.
@oscar-gordon I would actually appreciate your thoughts on the Boeing move, since in a lot of respects, such as you mention with expense, it really seemed like a lateral move in many ways. On the surface it isn't like a California-to-Texas tax move or Northeast-to-Raleigh Tech move with obvious immediate benefits. It was something like 500 employees and the stated reason was centrally located, but sounded mostly like a preference and prestige move than a business one. I bring it up since there are parallels to that competition and the much larger, much drooled over Amazon HQ2 sage currently going on.
Ci1: The Gov/Military has used that site for years for multitude of reasons. I actually had a transportation management class once years ago where they used the satellite overlay as part of teaching infrastructure planning.
Ci0: This is just awesome. The speed correction to make it more lifelike from the high frame rate is just amazing. There is so many possibilities here, @jaybird keeps talking about VR, imagine having a history class where they colorize, speed correct, and add ambient noise to films like this and a history student can "physically" be in the environment of 1911 NYC and even interact with it. All the historic events, even if just old newsreels, could be repurposed in an amazing, productive way.
On “North and South Korea Pledge Peace”
ding ding ding
On “Amazon More Than Doubles Quarterly Profits”
Their eFilfillment plans is what I was referring to their logistics being set up all wrong, but we can get into the weeds on the details of backhaul, linehaul, empty trailers and such quickly there.
The bleeding is real. And not just managers, Wal-Mart for decades was the standard in Drivers, it was very hard to get in and they took a lot of pride in having the best fleet guys. And they are losing that group through retirements, attrition, and many are not liking the current direction. You cant replace a 1,2, or 3 million mile driver and maintain that safety and performance record.
On “North and South Korea Pledge Peace”
That is a huge factor. It is also a point of concern for me, as the ruling party ran and was elected on a reconciliation platform while that scandal crippled opposition. I'm not an expert, but clearly the current SK leadership was desiring an agreement for some time. My hope is this is all legitimate and profitable for everyone, but I worry promises were made to DPRK in order for the South, and us, to claim a hollow victory.
On “Linky Friday: Food, Guns & Family”
My passenger side mirror cover is broken right now from a guy pulling across it while I wasn't even in it. My neighborhood is pretty self enclosed, but that also means the kids and also some adults are a bit braver than they should be so you have to be even more vigilant in some ways. And in town is worse. I mindlessly still sometimes do a walkaround of the car before getting in just out of muscle memory sometimes. Habits.
On “Amazon More Than Doubles Quarterly Profits”
Comments was invented for windmill tilting, so tilt away. I have been accused of being anti-union but I am not, I am anti what many unions in America have become, but that is another topic for another day.
Your statement here has real validity:
Especially in a larger company, lower level manager is an awful place to be in. There is of course something to be said for starting out and working your way up, but it is a legitimate criticism that too often they are rode to death (mostly figuratively) for the convience and
cost effectiveness of a company. My first civilian job after the service is a perfect example: I took it knowing it was poor situation but needed to start somewhere (I was there relatively briefly until a much better job came along which I took) but as a salaried manager at a national company, I was making less money than the most of the 200+ people I was supervising, and the more senior guys made almost twice as much. Incredibly high pace at that job, as the new guy working weekends and odd hours as need, and constant pressure to perform. This is not a complaint, frankly I'm one of those twisted people that thrive in a pressure environment, and while not enjoyable I leveraged it into a much better job at one of the larger transportation companies in short order. To your point, its easy to see how such an situation can be leveraged and abused for wrongdoing, especially with a young or straight out of college kid that isn't savy to the darker parts of business to avoid.
"
@mike-dwyer I'll ask you then, is it worth writing up the rise and fall of Wal-Mart? Not original, many people have done it. The Wal-Mart logistical model was literally the one in the textbooks taking transportation management courses. But now it is an infrastructure that is built exactly opposite to what they need, and is tying their hands behind their back when they need to be able to fight the Amazons of the world. I wonder the wider appeal of it beyond boxkickers and loggies? And I welcome any conversation, anytime.
"
There a point I will make when it comes to Wal-Mart/Amazon and the narrative that was on the first and is now being applied to the later. And Lets stipulate any mistreatment of any worker should be dealt with swiftly. (Full disclosure, I briefly worked at Wal-Mart in 99-2000 a job I enjoyed so much I joined the military to get out of there, and I've peripherally been involved, and at one point interviewed with, Amazon in 2013 when they were doing some mass logistical hiring. I turned the offer down due to not wanting to move and live where the employment would have been. FWIW)
Now that we got that out of the way. Wal-Mart and Amazon share two core sins to some folks that make them a target: They are nearly monopolizing their sectors with immense profits, and they are non-union employers. Where you fall on those two issues usually affects your view of the overall company. So the biggest companies also become the touchpoints for a lot of issues, like income disparity (CEO to worker pay, etc) workers rights, collective bargaining, union vs non-union, employee healthcare, the list goes on and on. So all the advocates for all those issues naturally turn their attention to the biggest target. If you are a union advocate, every instance of worker mistreatment will get attention at the non-union company. If you are advocating for income equality, CEO to average salary ratio gets highlighted. And so on. Saying all that, drag Amazon, Wal-Mart, and anyone else who mistreats their workers, and prosecute them where applicable if they violate OSHA and other regulations and rightly so. But we should also be discerning in when some have an agenda to promote. Warehouse work, which I've done at a high paced level, is never easy; its hard, hard work at a fast pace with deadlines and pressure. The workers should be compensated accordingly and given as safe as possible an environment to do so in. But it can always be described as various shades of "unfair" and unpleasant cause it is.
On “Let’s Dispel the Myth That Trumpism Is Destroying “Reagan’s GOP””
Most of the people claiming Burkean principles never read Burke. Its a problem throughout politics and why tribalism is an issue, people just flock to a banner and adapt the lingo without actually studying or thinking through positions, they just want into the group.
I digress. Anyway. Trump absolutely played to the lowest common denominator with some of his rhetoric. There is a ratio to be found in the data of the more culturally and economically disaffected you are, or perceive yourself to be, the stronger the support. But this speaks far more to a savior complex than actual policy or ideology preference. In analyzing Trump supporters, especially his hard core base, we need to be careful applying some overriding political lessons when a lot of it just straight hero worship, whatever political label gets applied to it.
On “Amazon More Than Doubles Quarterly Profits”
Wal-Mart is dying. I will get around to writing up a long post on it (I'm a transport/logistics guy by trade so I assume people may not be interested in such things like I am) at some point but their logistics system that made them the behemoth they are now, is now the same things that is strangling them to death without any way to fix it, far more than just E-commerce eating into their sales.
Having said that, it is interesting that the language and criticisms of Amazon seem to be coming from the exact same playbook used against Wal-Mart, almost verbatim.
On “Let’s Dispel the Myth That Trumpism Is Destroying “Reagan’s GOP””
FDR lead the nation in prayer as part of his D-Day announcement. Can you imagine a president doing that today. Also one of the all-time great presidential speeches that isn't talked about enough. If you haven't you should go listen to it.
"
This is an interesting comment. Your final statement is correct it is an attention addiction thing. Reagan was a master communicator in the medium of his day, first on radio. People forget he did radio commentaries for years before becoming governor and it honed his messaging and presentation which later translated well to TV. Trumps mediums of first reality TV and now Twitter especially, wasn't him honing his delivery and message as much as him filtering out to the world the image and brand he wanted them to see. He knows he can throw a grenade into the news cycle anytime he wants, a more destructive version of the Obama-era "stray voltage" theory. Again a lot of Trump falls on the press when blame is to be laid out, first in the breathless wall to wall coverage during the campaign and now just chasing his morning tweets and reporting, repeating, and panel discussing those tweets all day instead of actually, you know, reporting on things.
"
I think Romney really broke her, she took a lot of flack on that from the right and it probably pushed her the way she was already leaning. I wish her no ill-will and read her work, but there was definitely a change.
"
I get the idea. How many people do you think live in that "world", or as you put "Ostensibly it was race-neutral" in their thinking? There are racist people with evil intentions, this is true. The far larger number of people, there are prejudices. It is an important distinction as racism is wicked and evil, whereas prejudice is born out of ignorance. We should be slow to attribute every prejudice to evil without a chance to show a different way. To be fair, a liberal va-va-vooms Christina Hendrix Joan character just as much as a conservative, libertatian, or moderate is prone to do. I have seen, as I'm sure you have, awful, vitriolic homophobic statements from people who profess to be LGBT tolerant. Hypocrisy comes from all places. Thus I take people as they come and try my best not to monolith them into blocks of labels with plyable meanings. There is no polar binary with people, we cannot treat them as such either in practice or theory. Even if they support Trump.
"
I think you are accurate in saying that:
This is a sentiment I hear over and over again from my friends that are left leaning/progressive. It's not a perception without merit. Trump-and he should be damned for it though the seperation from Bannon seems to have purged this fact from memory-absolutely allowed the perception that he was championing the Breitbart crowd. In practicum he was lying to them as much as he was lying to conservatives about supporting their beliefs. But he escaped any accountability for aligning with Bannon and company in the first place. I understand the charicature that projects onto the right. And "nevertrump" has become another one of those terms like fake news that means whatever the user intends it to mean, but there was a large amount of conservatives/moderates/libertarians that didnt vote for or support Trump and try to call balls and strikes on his presidency.
Trump is killing the GOP, but its the GOP's own fault for being such a hollow vapid thing that someone like Trump can wear its carcass and claim leadership of it. Their own fault. Dem's shouldn't gloat too much, they have their own inter-party civil war that is unresolved and the next election could very well reignite.
"
Trump is going to propose Medicaid for all before he is finished. He has talked about it before.
"
Conservativism is not a movement of white supremacy. And no side has shown any qualms about not "looting the treasury". Trump, at best, played a lot of footsie and wink-wink with the scum of the Alt-right (or whatever they are calling themselves this week), Bannon, ect and should be called out on it, and was by some conservatives, though I grant you not enough to their own shame. But the wannabe Nazism of those tiki-torch outcasts are not any more representative of conservatism than the rioting anarchist of Antifa are of the greater left when they are destroying property and causing mayhem. Trump showed people would abandon a lot of what they said they believed in order to "win" and follow a crowd. It's not a coalition of ideology Trump has, its a personality cult, projecting what you want to believe on a celebrity, and enough people lodged an "F the system" vote to go along with the sycophants to get him elected.
"
Interesting you mention Rubin, there was actually some notice this past week when they reworked her bio to "covering conservative" instead of being one, with many speculating that very same thing.
On “Linky Friday: Food, Guns & Family”
Tr4: Its probably a laughable thing, but to American's who have never visited the Netherlands or other countries that are densely packed in the urban areas and very bicycle dependent it's just impossible to visualize this. Most of American construction has been built after roads were laid down, where in cities like Amsterdam, Haarlem (my favorite of the Dutch cities), Rotterdam, ect. roads are being shoe-horned into cities never designed for them. Now add a bike lane and that space is even tighter. In most of Europe cyclist have absolute right of way in all circumstances, and hitting one in any form is criminal.
On “Let’s Dispel the Myth That Trumpism Is Destroying “Reagan’s GOP””
I agree that Reagan is overly deified to the point of being perceived flawless by the right, but the comparison of him and Trump does not hold up very well. Though an actor, Reagan had also been a labor union head, twice elected Governor of California, and won the Presidency on his 3rd try. From his conversion to the Republican party in 1962, whatever you thought of his beliefs he was consistent in expressing them through the rest of his life. Trump, though registered as a Republican, found his right-leaning stances and rhetoric about 5 minutes before his Presidential campaign as a strategy more than a conviction.
The initial charge that Trump is not the Iconoclast he is presented is accurate and fair. We have 69 years of book on Trump. He is what he does, not what he says. He donated and influenced politicians of both parties. He wielded government and law to the advancement of his business concerns and bankruptcy to shield himself from the failure. He will never "drain the swap" as is inanely repeated, because that is exactly the eco-system he needs to operate in.
On “Bill Cosby Found Guilty”
I have all daughters so believe me the topic is discussed, and these cases highlighted.
"
As with a lot of these stories, the disturbing aspect is the "everyone knew for years" part that only seems to be know to everyone once the predatory is safely at arms link or no longer of use to certain people. Got a quick post up so didn't include it, but Cosby's behavior in court does not lead to contrition at all, rather the opposite; someone who still thinks they should get away with it all. I doubt this story is done.
On “Ronnie Jackson Withdraws From Consideration to Lead Veteran Affairs”
There is a lot of truth to what you say. And frankly, positions such as that of working in White House are valued specifically for the leeway and perks that come with it. Same is true in high commands, pentagon and other postings.
On “Morning Ed: Cities {2018.04.26.Th}”
I thought as much but didn't want to speculate just off the top of my head.
"
@oscar-gordon I would actually appreciate your thoughts on the Boeing move, since in a lot of respects, such as you mention with expense, it really seemed like a lateral move in many ways. On the surface it isn't like a California-to-Texas tax move or Northeast-to-Raleigh Tech move with obvious immediate benefits. It was something like 500 employees and the stated reason was centrally located, but sounded mostly like a preference and prestige move than a business one. I bring it up since there are parallels to that competition and the much larger, much drooled over Amazon HQ2 sage currently going on.
"
Ci1: The Gov/Military has used that site for years for multitude of reasons. I actually had a transportation management class once years ago where they used the satellite overlay as part of teaching infrastructure planning.
Ci0: This is just awesome. The speed correction to make it more lifelike from the high frame rate is just amazing. There is so many possibilities here, @jaybird keeps talking about VR, imagine having a history class where they colorize, speed correct, and add ambient noise to films like this and a history student can "physically" be in the environment of 1911 NYC and even interact with it. All the historic events, even if just old newsreels, could be repurposed in an amazing, productive way.