George Will observes strange shipmates: Longshoremen and Trump are in the same anti-automation boat.
When Harold Daggett, the horny-handed son of toil who for more than 10 years has been president of the International Longshoreman’s Association, grips with his callused hands the steering wheel of his Bentley (the least expensive of these British-made beauties costs north of $200,000), he knows that the president of the United States will be riding shotgun. Donald Trump, ever transactional, has rewarded Daggett for the ILA’s neutrality (in 2020 it endorsed Joe Biden) in the 2024 presidential campaign.
A brief October strike shut 36 East and Gulf coast ports that Daggett’s union controls — the first Maine-to-Texas strike in 47 years. Longshoremen won a tentative 61.5 percent pay increase over six years. The Wall Street Journal editorial page notes “the astounding fact” that there are only about 25,000 port jobs, so about half of ILA members do not have to show up for work daily. The rest stay home collecting payments previously negotiated in contracts protecting “jobs” (loosely — very loosely — defined). In 2010, Daggett said his members should make more than $400,000 annually. Today, the Journal says, “some now do with overtime.”
Daggett, however, threatens another strike on Jan. 15 unless any additional automation — e.g., automated cranes loading and unloading containers — is banned. Resistance to automation is why no U.S. port ranks among the world’s 50 most efficient. The strike could “cripple” and “crush” (his promises) the nation’s economy before Trump’s promised tariffs do.
Today's Getty image is of a Chinese port, indicating the Commies have a better grasp on what improves productivity than our incoming president.
And I had to Google that "horny-handed son of toil" phrase, since it sounded literary. And it was! Oxford Essential Quotations attributes it to Lord Salisbury. He also coined "too clever by half". And also…
No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
I imagine Lord Salisbury is pontificating in heaven, in a special room where brandy is sniffed and snipped, and fine cigars smoked.
Also of note:
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Still crazy after all these years. On occasion, James Lileks will provide his Bleat readers with The Wednesday Reivew of Modern Thought. Yesterday, he took on (for some reason) a 2017 article in the Guardian by one Abi Wilkinson: Why not fund the welfare state with a 100% inheritance tax? Excerpt:
Let us have a look at some key arguments.
Yes, the desire to pass on property to your descendants may be natural – but
Need we go on, having run into the tell-tale but? Sure.
but why should we be slaves to our biology? Social progress has frequently depended on our ability to transcend individualistic urges and work together for the common good.
Wanting to give your children your property is a matter of being a slave to biology. After all, we went to the moon by hiring a lot of unrelated people, right? Bad example; waste of money, wasn’t social progress. Well, pick a social issue, and you’ll see it was solved by transcending individualistic urges - a feat that was achieved entirely by volunteers, of course, not the application of the force of the state.
In contemporary times, most people agree that tax should facilitate transfer of wealth from those who “have” to those who “need”.
“Most people” being everyone she knows. Other people have a notion that the purpose of a tax is not to facilitate transfer of wealth but to fund the various duties the state has assumed or been given authority to perform by the governed.
Yeah, and it's not as if they're doing a real bang-up job at that. How about they leave off doing anything more sophisticated unless and until they master doing the stuff that's in (for example) the Constitution?
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Slack cut. Jacob Sullum is no Trump acolyte, but he sees some possibilities: Trump's January 6 pardons could address some real injustices.
On his first day in office, President-elect Donald Trump promises, he will pardon at least some of the 1,500 or so people who have been charged with crimes in connection with the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. He notes that most of those defendants were not violent and that they faced a lot of pressure to plead guilty, as about 1,000 have done so far.
Trump's most vociferous critics are apt to view any pardons in these cases as an outrageous and self-interested attempt to excuse the behavior of "insurrectionists" who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. But even though Trump himself is largely to blame for the riot, which was inspired by his unfounded insistence that Joe Biden had stolen the election, he raises some valid points about prosecutorial power, which can lead to unjust results that might be remedied by the prudent use of presidential clemency.
Jacob's bottom line:
When you combine that sort of discretion with the puzzling practice of imposing sentences after trial based on allegations that the prosecution failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, it is not hard to see why some January 6 defendants may have received excessively severe penalties. If Trump draws appropriate distinctions and uses his clemency powers carefully—a big if—he can mitigate those injustices.
What's the probability he will use "his clemency powers carefully". Er… um … well, let us be charitable as befits the season, and say "We'll see."
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And it's a spectator sport we can all enjoy. At Townhall, Rebecca Downs observes The Trump Team Sure Loves Trolling Elizabeth Warren. Rebecca looks at a recent WaPo story about Senator Warren's complaints/allegations about Elon Musk's potential conflicts of interest in running that government efficiency department, DOGE.
The report also contains comment from Karoline Leavitt, who was the press secretary for the Trump campaign and the transition, and who will serve in such a role during the Trump-Vance administration.
"President Trump has assembled the most impressive and qualified team of innovators, entrepreneurs, and geniuses to advise and staff our government," Leavitt said in a statement that looks to have represented the Trump team well. "Pocahontas can play political games and send toothless letters, but the Trump-Vance transition will continue to be held to the highest ethical and legal standards possible — a standard unfamiliar to a career politician whose societal impact is 1/1024th of Elon Musk’s."
Karoline Leavitt ran for Congress in my district against Chris Pappas back in 2022. She lost by about 8 percentage points. I'm pretty sure I voted for her, but so far she seems pretty good in her fallback job.
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We're all gettin' old, I suppose, but… For some reason, the folks at Dotdash Meredith started sending me issues of People magazine. For free!
So, dutifully, every week I page through an issue, marvelling at how few of today's celebrities I've heard of.
But their latest issue had a short article about a new Netflix series starring Ray Romano and Lisa Kudrow (No Good Deed).
And here's the thing: I'm pretty sure I would not recognize Lisa Kudrow if I saw her in public. (Recent pic on your right. What do you think?)
What's the story? Aggressive plastic surgery? This MSN article seems to weigh in favor of Botox.
Anyway, I watched the first episode of No Good Deed, and … nah, too dark for me. And Lisa's face is a tad disconcerting.
![[The Blogger and His Dog]](/ps/images/me_with_barney.jpg)
