A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
VIEWED: 755368
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Quote:My job is forcing me to take the covid vaccine or else they will let me go. Is that legal?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Taking away somebody's ability to make money to live is no different than an actual mandate. Period.
I'm not worried about me. I can wait this out much longer than it will be in the news, replaced by the next big thing. I'm not now or ever getting the vaccination.
Answer: 49 of the 50 US states have “employment at will” laws, which gutted worker protections, reduced or eliminated fair labor relations boards, and made it absolutely legal for employers to terminate employees with or without notice and with or without cause for any reason whatsoever as long as the reason isn’t membership in a protected class.
So, yes, it’s legal.
I see this question a lot on Quora, and I must confess I do literally, not figuratively, laugh every time I see it.
When Ronald Reagan was in office, one of the big conservative legislative pushes was to gut fair worker relations laws and abolish fair labor relations boards in favor of a system that offered basically zero worker protections. Worker protections are Socialist! Fair labor laws are government intrusion in private business! Business works better without government oversight!
Conservatives battled ceaselessly for decades to pass these laws. Liberals kept saying “you know, if you pass these laws, there will come a day when they’re used against conservatives” and conservatives were all “no, no, no, never happen, I can’t hear you la la la.”
Now here we are. 49 states have implemented at-will employment laws, and…
Conservatives are having their contracts dropped because of the things they Tweet. Conservatives who don’t want to wear masks or get vaccinated are getting fired. And conservatives are all “it’s not fair this can’t be legal how dare you do that MY CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS!”
We told you.
We told you this would happen.
Yes. Yes, it is legal.
https://www.quora.com/Can-the-covid-19-vaccine-be-made-legally-mandato
ry-Can-jobs-mandate-that-you-have-it-to-go-to-work/answer/Franklin-Veaux
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Not getting it. 
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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'Help Wanted' signs aren't a mystery. They're a message.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210906154737/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/opinion/editorials/article/Editorial-Help-Wanted-signs-aren-t-a-16434684.php
An asthma attack on Tuesday pushed Andrea Dutta one step closer to getting fired.
Dutta’s employer, a security contractor at Bush Intercontinental Airport, gave her a day off to recover, and then added a punitive point to her personnel file. If Dutta gets sick or has to miss work for any reason, even with a doctor’s note, the company adds a point. If she accrues more than seven points, she will lose her job.
Workers such as Dutta are vital to the airport ecosystem. As a wheelchair agent, she spends her days helping elderly or disabled people who need assistance boarding or deplaning, collecting their baggage and safely handing them off to family members or connecting them with ground transport. For this, Dutta makes $11 an hour, which is actually four dollars more than what she was paid when she started two years ago.
The pay raise isn’t part of a company merit system. It was the result of a 2019 executive order from Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner that bumped up wages for hundreds of airport employees to at least $12 an hour by 2022.
The hike was a nice lift for Dutta, but it doesn’t address the other stresses of her job. She has two children, and her job provides little flexibility to pick them up from school or care for them when they get sick. She has no health benefits, and has to pay out of pocket for parking as well as personal protective equipment to keep her safe from COVID-19. She relies heavily on tips from the people she helps, but not everyone tips.
“Do they expect us to live on a $600 check every two weeks?” Dutta told the editorial board on Thursday.
While some employees are reaping the benefits of a more dynamic pandemic economy that allows for greater flexibility in working from home and, in some cases, opportunities for higher pay, low-wage essential workers aren’t faring as well, even amid a national labor shortage. Often, they disproportionately bear the costs of states’ inability and in some cases unwillingness to slow the virus’ spread, further exacerbating the inequality in our labor market.
Many have lost jobs and seen their hours cut. Even those who have been revered as “essential workers” often don’t find the title, or their daily toiling on the front lines of this pandemic, have earned them higher pay, status or regard in the eyes of higher-ups within their companies.
For those workers such as Dutta, who managed to hold on to low-paying jobs, there are few opportunities for upward mobility. Economists and policymakers who hailed the country’s low pre-pandemic unemployment rate overlooked the fact that wages at the bottom have stagnated and benefits have dried up. A nation whose essential workers can’t access paid sick leave, childcare options or health insurance is one whose economic growth will eventually hit a brick wall.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced in July that while the economy added 850,000 jobs in June, there are 7 million fewer jobs than there were before the pandemic — a gap that has disproportionately hit the low-wage workforce. According to the Brookings Institute, low-wage workers comprise more than half of all pandemic-induced job losses. In Texas, while gross domestic product has surpassed pre-pandemic levels, unemployment is 2 percent higher than it was before March 2020. While some business owners contend that the state’s enhanced unemployment benefits, which paid jobless workers an extra $300 a week, played a role in delaying their return to a job, Texas was one of a handful of states to end those benefits early at the end of June. Economists note the July jobs report did not show any significant employment gains for Texas.
These vacancies are nonetheless hurting businesses all across the state. Stroll past your local Whataburger or Fuddruckers and you’re likely to see a “help wanted” sign in the window. The r
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People can go flip their own fuckin' burgers and cut their own fuckin' hair.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Quote:After the Civil War was over the plantation owners still grew cotton the same old way as before the Civil War and still needed their ex-slaves, who were now "free" to seek farm employment at whatever plantation paid the best wages. The new labor system based on "free" workers actually was less expensive for the owners than the old system based on slavery because in the new "free" labor system there was no more free food for the workers, no more free housing, no more free clothing, no more free anything, which is the system America still uses today.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
People can go flip their own fuckin' burgers and cut their own fuckin' hair.
The one "free" thing that the ex-slaves had that they didn't have while slaves was the right to vote, but when Ulysses S. Grant was no longer President, they lost that right.
The South and the end of Reconstruction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutherford_B._Hayes#The_South_and_the_en
d_of_Reconstruction
I see that an even cheaper labor system is possible: Restaurants across the country are struggling to find employees, so one establishment in Dallas decided to hire robots to help pick up the slack.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/07/business/dallas-restaurant-employs-robo
ts-trnd/index.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:After the Civil War was over the plantation owners still grew cotton the same old way as before the Civil War and still needed their ex-slaves, who were now "free" to seek farm employment at whatever plantation paid the best wages. The new labor system based on "free" workers actually was less expensive for the owners than the old system based on slavery because in the new "free" labor system there was no more free food for the workers, no more free housing, no more free clothing, no more free anything, which is the system America still uses today.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
People can go flip their own fuckin' burgers and cut their own fuckin' hair.
Yeah. Maybe one day we'll stop blowing Abraham Lincoln and telling everybody that he was the greatest President America ever had.
But the paragraph that you just posted above never gets taught in school.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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And meanwhile... nearly every person I've ever known is a wage slave to this day. Even the ones clearing six figures.
Gotta keep buying all that shit you don't need with money you don't yet have.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Quote:You would think most Americans could learn from history, but you would be wrong:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
And meanwhile... nearly every person I've ever known is a wage slave to this day. Even the ones clearing six figures.
Gotta keep buying all that shit you don't need with money you don't yet have.
13 Things Benjamin Franklin Said about Money that are Still True Today
https://www.moneymanagement.org/blog/things-benjamin-franklin-said-abo
ut-money-that-are-still-true-today
“If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone.” -- B. Franklin
But for Americans who don't remember that the Philosopher's stone changes base metals into precious metals, Franklin's meaning is lost for them.
Another aphorism that goes completely over the heads of most Americans:
“Our necessities never equal our wants.” -- B. Franklin
It can be hard to tell the difference, but it’s crucial to learn what you really need and what you only want.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Political Adversaries (Or why Democrats and Republicans are oil and water)
A Conflict of Visions is a book by Thomas Sowell. It was originally published in 1987; a revised edition appeared in 2007. Sowell's opening chapter attempts to answer the question of why the same people tend to be political adversaries in issue after issue, when the issues vary enormously in subject matter and sometimes hardly seem connected to one another. The root of these conflicts, Sowell claims, are the "visions", or the intuitive feelings that people have about human nature; different visions imply radically different consequences for how they think about everything.
A Conflict of Visions begins with this quote:
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day. -- Bertrand Russell
A Conflict of Visions continues:
One of the curious things about political opinions is how often the same people line up on opposite sides of different issues. The issues themselves may have no intrinsic connection with each other. They may range from military spending to drug laws to monetary policy to education. Yet the same familiar faces can be found glaring at each other from opposite sides of the political fence, again and again. It happens too often to be coincidence and it is too uncontrolled to be a plot. A closer look at the arguments on both sides often shows that they are reasoning from fundamentally different premises. These different premises—often implicit—are what provide the consistency behind the repeated opposition of individuals and groups on numerous, unrelated issues. They have different visions of how the world works.
Download the book A Conflict of Visions from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.ws/search.php?req=A+Conflict+of+Visions
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The reason why Rebublians and Democrats paint themselves as adversaries is because they're both fighting over money. But since neither of them actually overturn or even modify the system that causes extreme wealth gap, they have to find different "reasons" to pretend to fight.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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