MAG Super Steve Chucri Has A Day-Job > Head Honcho For Arizona Restaurant Association

Right--to-Work GOP lawmakers at all levels seem determined to create a pool of workers so financially desperate that they’ll work for whatever meager pay employers deign to offer. It’s a barbaric way to treat people, and it betrays a bleak vision of our fellow Americans. There is no crisis of laziness. The only real crisis is that we haven’t ensured that people can go back to meaningful, remunerative work.  

" Arizona restaurants that survived the pandemic are returning to normal capacity levels. What isn’t returning to normal are their employment numbers. 

Across the state, sections of tables are unoccupied with no one to wait on them, and customers are waiting a longer time in line as understaffed kitchens scramble to construct their meals.

A major reason for the lopsided ratio of customers to employees might be the ongoing unemployment checks that have been in effect since last year. ????????????????????

(Tracy Matsue Loeffelholz)

There Is No Crisis of Laziness

Republicans seem determined to make workers so financially desperate that they’ll labor for whatever pay employers deign to offer. 

By Bryce CovertTwitter Today 5:00 am

The Nation

Americans are, in fact, heading back to work, even if it’s not as briskly as some would like. New unemployment claims have been steadily dropping in recent weeks and fell 48 percent between January and late May.

But apparently that progress isn’t fast enough for Republican governors. Collectively, the states that say they will pull out of the enhanced federal benefits are expected to kick as many as 4.1 million people off the rolls this month.

This should come as no surprise. Conservatives have long been hell-bent on trying to force Americans to work by threatening to take away benefits if they don’t. . .

======================== STOP RIGHT THERE

Steve Chucri is president of the Arizona Restaurant Association. He says paying workers to stay home is no longer necessary and unfair to taxpayers. 

“Look, as a taxpayer I don’t think that’s right,” Chucri said. “I know these people work very hard. But unless you’re going and actively seeking employment, I don’t think you should be getting paid to be sitting at home doing nothing.”

After a year or more at home, workers’ biggest hurdles may be the emotional change of returning in person, says Geoffrey Smith, associate professor at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business. 

“It’s not so much that people may not want to work, it’s that change,” Smith said. “You know, it's having to establish a new routine. And having to actually, you know, get up and go to work. It’s just that first step."

Effective July 10, The state will no longer pay $300 a week in federal supplemental unemployment. Instead, it will offer a $2,000 bonus to anyone who finds a full-time job and $1,000 to those who can get part-time work. They also must stay on the job for at least 10 weeks to receive the bonus."

Upping The Ante: The American Workforce Deserves A Good Job NOT MORE PEOPLE IMPOVERISHED

Let's get straight to the point right now >

There Is No Crisis of Laziness

Republicans seem determined to make workers so financially desperate that they’ll labor for whatever pay employers deign to offer. 

By Bryce CovertTwitter

Today 5:00 am

Republican governors are done sympathizing with the millions of unemployed Americans. In March 2020, Congress expanded unemployment benefits to offset the steep, sudden loss of jobs caused by Covid-19. But as of late May, more than three-quarters of GOP-led states said they would prematurely end the extra $300 payments, broadened eligibility, and longer benefit period.

Lawmakers in these 24 states say they are responding to claims by business owners that more generous unemployment benefits make people unwilling to come back to their jobs. But that complaint is more fantasy than fact.

Economists have pumped out reams of studies on the question of whether larger unemployment benefits make people hesitant to work. The findings are nearly unanimous: They don’t

. . .Collectively, the states that say they will pull out of the enhanced federal benefits are expected to kick as many as 4.1 million people off the rolls this month.

This should come as no surprise. Conservatives have long been hell-bent on trying to force Americans to work by threatening to take away benefits if they don’t. They have, for example, touted work requirements in cash welfare assistance, a stick meant to coerce the poor into taking jobs in order to receive financial assistance. We’ve learned since they were instituted that they don’t increase work. What they do is leave more people impoverished.

 

 

From The Extreme Far-Right: Arizona's Andy Biggs, Representing "The Fighting 5th" Congressional District

With a public education system ranking  #49 near-the-bottom of achievement standards can Arizona and The Nation expect anything more from Mr.Biggs? Arizona is down there with The State of Mississippi. . Neither state can be proud of their history of systemic racism.

The Miseducation of White Children

The attacks on critical race theory are just another attempt to prevent this country from reckoning with its racist past and present—by keeping white kids ignorant.

By Elie MystalTwitter June 3, 2021

The Nation

(Image credit: US Representative Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) speaking at a press conference about banning federal funding for the teaching of critical race theory.

(Michael Brochstein / Sipa USA via AP Images)

"President Joe Biden went to Tulsa, Okla., this week to honor the victims of the 1921 massacre on “Black Wall Street” and, as important, to acknowledge that it happened. It was a nice presidential visit (albeit one devoid of any policy proposals for redress of the wrongs committed) that fulfilled what should be a bare minimum requirement in a country able to tell the truth about itself . . .The reason most people didn’t know about the massacre is because they don’t teach about this history in schools.

The United States doesn’t rely only on Hollywood or the media to tell the story of white people in the New World. This country also employs a different institution, the public school system, to spread the myth of white exceptionalism and to whitewash the episodes of white terrorism against others.

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INSERT Uploaded by Breitbart to YouTube on May 12, 2021

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An essential project of that education system is to absolve present-day white people of any need to reckon with the horrors that made their world possible—and still make their world possible—by assuring them that whatever sins this country committed were redeemed or corrected by the efforts of previous Americans.

As often as not, those sins and horrors are covered up to protect young white minds from ever knowing the truth about our country. This project is designed to leave white Americans feeling that they have nothing to atone for, so they can blithely continue doing the work of white supremacy and reaping the rewards of white privilege with a clear conscience. All historical tragedies, the ones that are mentioned at least, are framed through the eyes of some American (usually white) who fought against evil forces. Children are supposed to believe, as most kids are inclined to do anyway, that the forces of good eventually triumphed. . .

> The founding of the country, for instance, is taught through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson, not Sally Hemmings.

> The fight for women’s rights is introduced only through the efforts of noted suffragist and racist Susan B. Anthony, not Sojourner Truth or Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

> Westward expansion is explored purely as the story of Lewis and Clark—and their helpful assistant Sacagawea.

> Slavery is addressed primarily through the redeeming narrative of “the Great Emancipator,” Abraham Lincoln.

> And, of course, students learn that any issue of racial oppression that Lincoln didn’t quite get around to solving was “fixed” by Martin Luther King Jr. and the anodyne, docile caricature of nonviolence white people have created around him.

To be educated in American schools is to be taught that this country has been on some kind of linear journey toward justice and equality, culminating in the nation the (brutal slaver and colonist) founders always really wanted us to be.How quickly and how completely one rejects this false historiography of America is, as much as anything, the dividing line between white conservatives and white liberals.

We more or less agree that those inequities exist and are, in fact, problems

 

Of course, conservative forces are never satisfied with merely promoting the white narrative of US history. They also feel the need to attack other narratives that take a less forgiving view of white contributions to the continents bizarrely named for people who got lost. And that is why conservative white people have lately descended upon “critical race theory” as their new casus belli.

But it works as a wedge issue for Republicans because teaching anybody, anywhere, that white people might still be complicit in the ongoing acts of violence and oppression against others goes against the conservative orthodoxy  that white people are the best people and any mistakes committed were either benevolent, justified, or corrected long ago.

KEEPING WHITE KIDS DUMB IS AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE

KEEPING NON-WHITE KIDS DUMB is also something conservatives are always trying to accomplish, but most parents of color know that going in. Every person of color from this country has at least been exposed—by a parent, elder, or the community writ large—­to an extracurricular crash course on what America is really about. . The author of this article taken from The Nation understands why white ignorance makes the conservative political project easier. It is, for instance, a lot easier to get white people to vote for continued housing discrimination if they don’t even understand how housing discrimination works.

 

Hobbling your own children with ignorance to maintain cultural dominance is a hell of a choice.

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RELATED CONTENT (Vanity Fair 06.04.2021)

Republican lawmakers in state after state are trying to crack down on teaching systemic racism, a culture war issue that fits right into the GOP's 2022 Midterm Elections Strategy.

By Caleb Ecarma June 4, 2021

The GOP’s “Critical Race Theory” Freakout Is Spreading Across America

 

Members of the House Freedom Caucus, including Reps. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., left, Mary Miller, R-Ill., and Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., conduct a news conference outside the Capitol on February 25, 2021.By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call

" In recent months Republican lawmakers in close to a dozen states have aggressively made legislative advances against the GOP’s latest culture war target: “critical race theory.”

Idaho governor Brad Little last month signed a bill supposedly designed to bar state-funded schools and universities from “indoctrinating” students into the view that “any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior.” While Idaho’s law, which is the first of its kind, may not sound disagreeable in theory, it is a different story in action, as the legislation could ostensibly ban educators from teaching that present-day financial inequality is linked to America’s history of systemic racism.

Critics of the legislation have also warned that it will stifle the First Amendment rights of teachers.

ARIZONA ...

Oklahoma, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, Missouri, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Rhode Island have all introduced similar bills or amendments, or have proposed state mandates that would have a similar impact on schools.

 

. . .The ACLU has condemned the new batch of legislation and questioned if the proposals violate the free speech rights of educators and students. “A nationwide attempt to censor discussions of race in the classroom is underway,” the free speech advocacy group wrote in a statement.

“These bills don’t just set back progress in addressing systemic issues, they also rob young people of an inclusive education and blatantly suppress speech about race.… It’s up to state governors across the country to veto these harmful bills.”

STATES OF EMERGENCY: Earth Science + Space Weather Impact The Planet

Never too early - or too late - to let this sink in again and again and again

Southwest heat wave intensifies, breaks records and worsens drought

Andrew Freedman

Axios | 2021-06-16T14:57:52.057878Z

A temperature "misery index" shows peak levels across the Southwest (orange and yellow), and the upper air flow shows how the jet stream is being pushed north, away from the heat dome hovering to impact the Four Corners region. (Earth.nullschool.net)

 

A punishing and long-enduring heat wave is intensifying in parts of the West and Southwest, with heat warnings and advisories in effect across seven states Wednesday. The heat will not relent until late in the weekend.

Threat level: In the coming days, 40 million are likely to see temperatures reach or exceed 100 degrees.

Why it matters: The extreme heat is unusually intense for June, and is aggravating already dire drought conditions that could lead to another devastating wildfire season.

The details: Overnight minimum temperatures in Las Vegas barely slipped below 90°F early Wednesday, and daytime highs are anticipated to approach the city’s all-time record of 117°F today through Saturday.

• In Phoenix, the low temperature Tuesday night into Wednesday warming was a stifling 91°F.
• The heat wave is the result of a sprawling area of high pressure at the surface and aloft, also known as a heat dome. It's deepening the already extreme drought across the West, and adding to the significant wildfire danger across the region.
• Wildfire risks are especially heightened from Arizona to California, northeastward into Montana. In Arizona and New Mexico, lightning from scattered thunderstorms could trigger new wildfires beginning Wednesday, as they mainly bring dry lightning and dust to a parched region.
  

The big picture: The West is currently experiencing its most intense and expansive drought of the 21st Century, and the heat wave and drought are reinforcing one another.

• One of the clearest conclusions of climate science is that heat waves are becoming more intense and longer-lasting as the climate warms overall. In some cases, climate studies have shown that extreme heat events could not have occurred in the absence of human-caused global warming.
• In recent years, there has also been a trend toward stubborn and sprawling heat domes that block storm systems and keep hot weather locked in place for days at a time.

The bottom line: The summer temperature outlook from the Weather Service shows a high likelihood of above average temperatures across the West and Southwest, in part driven by prevailing weather patterns as well as the drought conditions.

 

NEW SUBMARINES FOR THE RUSSIA'S POWERFUL NORTHERN FLEET!!! AND THE US N...

United Airlines’ Bet on Supersonic Flight Faces Financial, Tech Hurdles ...

Remote from The Lower Chambers CRYPT-O GOVERNMENT > Mesa City Council 06.10.2021

Another "Study Session"??? OK. Can you read into this why the same-old same-old "business-as-usual" stuff is getting so tired... so tired. And there's 'a new response plan for emergency 911 mental issue calls' ?? Under the guise of public safety?? OK

And the MAG - that schedules and cancels more meetings faster that you can blink an eye - is showing up in The Lower Chambers to do what?

 

The best item on the agenda for tomorrow is NOT the Tentative Agenda for the next Study Session or NOT the Tentative Agenda for the next Regular Meeting - but to have the chance to read the 30-day old "Approved Minutes' for the Economic Development Advisory Board from 04 May last month!

Council Study Session Notice: To decrease COVID-19 exposure, the City Council Chambers is closed, but public viewing and input on the items are available electronically. Members of the City Council may appear electronically for this meeting, via a video conferencing platform, and the live meeting will be accessible via broadcast and telephonically. 

Because of the current public health emergency, the City Council Chambers is closed for Council study sessions. However, the live meeting may be watched on local cable Mesa channel 11, online at Mesa11.com/live, www.youtube.com/user/cityofmesa11/live, or https://www.facebook.com/CityofMesa, or listened to by calling 888-788-0099 or 877-853-5247 (toll free) using meeting ID 5301232921 and following the prompts. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

ONLINE COMMENT CARD >

 https://www.mesaaz.gov/government/city-council-meetings/online-meeting-comment-card

Public participation will be available electronically. If you want to provide a written comment or speak telephonically at the meeting, please submit an online comment card by going to Mesaaz.gov/bluecard at least 1 hour prior to the start of the meeting. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

For any difficulties accessing this meeting, please call 480-644-2099. 

City Council Study Session City of Mesa 

Meeting Agenda - Final 

Mesa Council Chambers 

57 East First Street 

Thursday, June 10, 2021 7:30 AM 

Lower Council Chambers 

Roll Call 

(City Council members participate in person or by electronic means.) 

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MEETING DETAILS WITH LINKS TO OPEN THE ATTACHMENTS > Use it!

File #	Agenda #	Type	Title	Action	Result	Action Details
21-0642	1-a	Presentation	Hear a presentation, discuss, and provide a recommendation on a new public safety response model for mental health 911 calls.			Not available
21-0641	1-b	Presentation	Hear a presentation on the extension Proposition 400 (the Maricopa County half-cent Regional Transportation Sales Tax), and discuss projects to be considered by Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) with a focus on transit, streets, and highway projects.			Not available
21-0677	2-a	Minutes	Economic Development Advisory Board meeting held May 4, 2021.			Not available

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1 Presentations/Action Items: 

File #21-0642 Hear a presentation, discuss, and provide a recommendation on a new public safety response model for mental health 911 calls. 1-a 

File #21-0641 Hear a presentation on the extension Proposition 400 (the Maricopa County half-cent Regional Transportation Sales Tax), and discuss projects to be considered by Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) with a focus on transit, streets, and highway projects. 1-b 

2 Acknowledge receipt of minutes of various boards and committees. 

File #21-0677 Economic Development Advisory Board meeting held on May 4, 2021

Current events summary including meetings and conferences attended. 

Scheduling of meetings. 

Adjournment.¹ 

¹ Prior to adjournment, at this Council meeting, the City Council may vote to go into executive session for legal advice on any item listed on this agenda pursuant to A.R.S. §38-431.03(A)(3); this notice is given pursuant to A.R.S. §38-431.02 to the members of the City Council and the public. 

City of Mesa Page 1 Printed on 6/8/2021 

City Council Study Session Meeting Agenda - Final June 10, 2021 

The City of Mesa is committed to making its public meetings accessible to persons with disabilities. 

For special accommodations, please contact the City Manager's Office at (480) 644-3333 or AzRelay 7-1-1 at least 48 hours in advance of the meeting. Si necesita asistencia o traducción en español, favor de llamar al menos 48 h