Author: Old Man With Candy

And perhaps a hint about why so much scorn is directed at the soi-disant “mainstream media.” In union elections yesterday, Boeing workers in South Carolina rejected union representation, and not by a small margin, either. Now, for me, I’d want to know what really happened, what were the actual issues and motivations. This apparently is not to be had. Reading the New York Times, there’s barely a clue. One might infer from hints buried deep in the article that there was some resentment that the union had opposed their plant in the first place for the benefit of workers in the high-wage (and this higher union dues rake-off) area of Seattle, but that’s hard to divine.

Worse yet is the coverage at ABC, who attribute the loss to dumb hick Southerners.

But this most recent test of Southern acceptance of collective bargaining movements was an uphill battle for the union and its backers… Southern states for decades have recruited manufacturers by promising freedom from the influences of labor unions, which except for some textile mills have been historically rejected by workers as collective action culturally foreign to a South built around family farms, said Jeffrey Hirsch, a law professor who specializes in labor relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Translation: These rubes are just too dumb to know what’s best for them.

So what was really the thing which caused the union to be soundly rejected, which is only possible when the State declines to interfere with free transactions of labor and management? Well, I guess we’ll never know.

One of the privileges of having this site is my ability to pervert it for my own selfish ends. And I’m now taking that opportunity. This is a tribute to my Valentine, Mrs. OMWC aka SP, the person who has done all the heavy lifting to put this site together and keep our little group of friends from breaking it.

This a perfect libertarian woman. She can cook like a pro, code like two pros, and can like a pioneer farmer. She can save a life and do professional art and photography (her work has been exhibited world-wide). She can play three different musical instruments and sing. She can read Feynman, Searle, and Dennett, and thereby falsifies CP Snow. She can run spreadsheets and organizations. She loves my friends, even the difficult and complicated ones we’ve met through my commenting on Reason, and the techno-nerds whom I’ve surrounded myself with throughout my life. She’s charmed world-famous musicians into playing in our living room, and kept others from strangling me. She is an amazingly accurate shooter, just in case. She has that knack of getting people to open up to her while always leaving them with the impression that she’s on their side.

Awesome does not begin to describe her.

And the dance continues. At what point will we finally decide that a petty border dispute in a tiny area affecting about 0.1% of the inhabitants of that region is not The Thing that drives all of the world’s troubles, that it isn’t our business to “solve” it, and “solving” it won’t actually change anything?

Oh, I forgot. Politics and symbolism. Opportunities for ignorant moral preening by half-wits. Reality has nothing to do with it.