MaxRedline

Score One For The Little Guys

Over the summer, the co-owner of Taste of Sicily — an Italian restaurant in Palmyra, Pennsylvania — made headlines when he defied left-wing Gov. Tom Wolf’s COVID-19 shutdown mandates and scoffed at the $10,000 in fines that came along with them.

 

“Some rob you with a gun, while others rob you with a pen,” co-owner Mike Mangano declared to PennLive at the time, referring to Wolf. “We ain’t paying crap.” “There’s absolutely no fear here. We’re going to continue to come to work, and the governor ain’t going to do anything about it.” 

Taste of Sicily took the matter up in court — and won. Judge Carl Garvey ruled the family business was unconstitutionally cited and the restaurant was found not guilty, the station said, adding that Winter noted Taste of Sicily’s owners won’t have to pay any fines, and they’re waiting for a hearing date against the Department of Agriculture.

Unsurprisingly, the governor says he plans to appeal the decision.

Of course, the governor's using tax dollars to pursue his vendetta, while the restaurant owners are using their own money.

The joint had been shut down for quite a while; owners and employees - unlike the governor - actually had to earn a living, and so they re-opened. Good for them! It's past time that ordinary people were able to tell the politicians to take a hike.

 

Yet Another Reason To Avoid Google Whenever Possible

Rather than create entirely on its own all the parts of the mobile operating system that has now come to be known as Android, Google elected to use more than 11,000 lines of coding from Oracle’s Java to make it run.

They didn't bother with stuff like licensing; they just lifted it. In executing this theft, they willfully violated a number of laws - not the least among which was federal copyright law, which covers computer code in addition to most other works.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Google v. Oracle on Oct. 7. The case involves several legal issues, all of which boil down to one principal question: Did Google cheat and steal its way to the top? 

While a decision on the case isn’t expected for a few months, the justices’ pointed questioning at the Big Tech giant points to the answer being a clear and resounding yes.

Personally, I don't use Google; I use DuckDuckGo for searches. Google tracks everything you do on the internet, DDG doesn't. While I don't do anything nefarious, I prefer privacy to snoops, so DDG is my default engine. I also use a virtual private network that tells anyone snooping that I'm in Seattle.

It's been ten years of legal wrangling between Google 's parent company and Sun Microsystems (which did the original Java coding before disbanding and turning the code over to Oracle), but it seems that the ducks have finally come home to roost at SCOTUS. It couldn't happen to a more deserving company.

 

Kroger Krack-Up

CONWAY, Ark. — The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has filed suit against The Kroger Company for violating federal civil rights law in that an Arkansas location allegedly fired two employees who sought religious accommodations not to wear an apron with a rainbow heart on the bib, symbolizing homosexual and bisexual pride. Both were fired from the Conway grocery store in June 2019 for violations of the store dress code.

“Companies have an obligation under Title VII to consider requests for religious accommodations, and it is illegal to terminate employees for requesting an accommodation for their religious beliefs,” Delner-Franklin Thomas, district director of the EEOC’s Memphis office, said in a statement. “The EEOC protects the rights of the LGBTQ community, but it also protects the rights of religious people.”

That's an interesting turn of events. Apparently it's actually possible to go overboard on the whole "political correctness" thing. Who'd have guessed?

 

At Least They're Honest

When you're sick and tired of paying people $400 an hour to spare your feelings and make you feel good, and you finally decide you want to start solving your problems, it's time to contact Asshole Consulting. At Asshole Consulting we just plain don't have the patience to kiss your ass and guess what you want us to tell you. Instead, we're going to tell you what we think and don't give a shit if that pisses you off. And yes, we're going to charge you for it.

Well, it may be a bit rough, but it's kind of refreshing to have a consultant out there who gives it to you straight.

 

Seattle In The Rearview Mirror

Tech giant Amazon is slowly abandoning Seattle. The company will not renew its lease for the top eight floors of an office building in South Lake Union. The space reportedly totals over 180,000 square feet. They’re heading for Bellevue, another upscale city across Lake Washington from Seattle.

Amazon, which leases over six million square feet of office space in Seattle, will bring another 10,000 jobs to Bellevue, in addition to the 15,000 previously announced jobs. These aren’t just new jobs. An Amazon source says the plan includes moving Seattle jobs to Bellevue.

So what's the motivation behind this move?

Seattle city council's new payroll tax - on top of all of the other taxes the company pays. And this isn't really all that slow a move: they plan to be out of Seattle in December. The Seattle city council managed to bite themselves well and truly in their collective butts with this move, as it's going to cost them a lot of revenue.

As they'll soon discover, actions have consequences.

 

AmazonBasics: Be Wary

Since 2016, at least 1,500 reviews, covering more than 70 items, have described products exploding, catching on fire, smoking, melting, causing electrical malfunctions or otherwise posing risks, according to an analysis of AmazonBasics electronics and appliances listed on its website.

There's a reason why the products are so inexpensive. And user errors seem to have been eliminated. Do not leave them unsupervised.

 

 

 

Portland In The Rear-View Mirror

20h

 

"Large companies are fleeing offices in downtown Portland — because nightly Black Lives Matter riots are making the heart of the Oregon city a no-go area" #PortlandRiots #antifa #BlackLivesMatter

 

Portland businesses fleeing downtown offices over nightly BLM riots

"Businesses are leaving,” Andrew Hoan, the president and CEO of the Portland Business Alliance (PBA), told KATU.

 

Every night it's been more of the same; people can only be expected to tolerate so much in terms of vandalism and other property damages - to say nothing of all the thefts. We need the National Guard in this town.

 

The Last Blockbuster On Earth

Is located in Bend, Oregon. And in addition to renting DVDs and tapes, some folks can rent the store.

Only residents of Deschutes County, where the Blockbuster is located, are permitted to request to book a stay at the store. The store is also only available for a limited time — for three individual, one-night reservations on September 18, 19 and 20. Booking requests are open to residents of the county starting August 17.

 

Bad News For PDX Workers

An airline food service provider is cutting 193 jobs in Portland as a result of the downturn in air travel during the Covid-19 pandemic. Sky Chefs Inc. filed notice with the state Friday that it planned to end the workers' jobs starting Oct. 1. United Airlines recently said it would furlough up to 119 workers at the airport, and Powell's books announced that it had permanently closed its airport locations.

I live under one of the main flight paths between Portland and California, and it hasn't been this quiet since 9/11. Should be easy to find a parking place around PDX, though.

 

NIKE Hits A Bad Stretch Of Track

Nike, after disclosing a rare money-losing quarter in June, announced layoffs that will eliminate at least 500 jobs at the company’s world headquarters in Oregon, according to the state of Oregon's Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification web site.

That's going to hit a lot of Beaverton-area families, and just in time for Halloween. Unfortunately, it's no prank.