Maybe the title World’s Richest Man should be reexamined. Elon Musk may have more money to his name than anybody else on the planet at this time, but at the rate he’s making enemies, is that really prosperity? Is that *wealth?* Think about it now. It’s the old Biblical aphorism come to life, “What doth it profit a man if he gain the entire world but loses his soul?” What are all the mansions and planes if you have to wear your kid on your shoulders as a human shield, as has been given for the reason that Elon hauls 4-year-old X with him wherever he goes. And frankly, I’m not sure X’s presence is a guarantee of safety. If somebody wanted Musk gone, I feel certain they wouldn’t stop, just because of a child’s presence. I think both Musk and X would be toast. Cynical perhaps, but that’s what I think.
The latest saga in Musk making friends and influencing people comes from the New York Times which reports that Italian workers at an airbase where a lot of Americans work and eat, received one of Musk’s contentious nastygrams asking what they did to justify their pay this week. Spoiler alert: the Italians are telling Musk to stick his efficiency ideas where the sun don’t shine.
One TikTok creator, Alberico Di Pasquale, made a video pretending to show an Italian employee on a permanent contract answering Mr. Musk’s email. “No. 1: I come to work, No. 2: I clock in, No. 3: breakfast,” he said. “No. 4: tournament with my colleagues to see who will get the coffee; No. 5: I get the coffee. Repeat five times points 4 and 5. No. 6: I go pay my bills and grocery shop; No. 7, I clock out.”
But while some had fun with the demands from Mr. Musk, for union representatives at the American base in Aviano, and other Italians, it was serious business.
As Mr. Trump questions the U.S. commitment to NATO and insists that Europe must defend itself, fears of spending cuts are spreading at U.S. bases abroad.
Amid a 30-day freeze of federal credit cards, the U.S. government last week also froze the credit cards that Italian employees at Aviano used to purchase equipment for the base, then started a hiring freeze, the unions said.
Union workers said they did not know what was going to come next. But they said they were going to fight on.
“Musk can do whatever he wants in the United States,” said Emilio Fargnoli, a union representative. “If they are happy with it, sure,” he added. “Not here.”
The labor laws in Italy are hyper protective of the average worker, in contrast to the United States where the worker has at will employment and can be fired for cause or for no cause. A lot of areas of the work force in America are not unionized, notably clerical workers. It’s well known that the word processors and secretaries keep corporate America afloat but still, they’re an unprotected class.
So are restaurant workers for the most part. The Culinary Union is powerful in Nevada, and Unite Here (which protects the same group of workers and warehouse workers) has 300,000 members in North America, but there are still a great many workers who are not protected by unions.
But Italy is different. Labor unions are very powerful and they are not up for Mr. Chainsaw and his ways.
“Ours is a system built on democracy, safeguards, and protections provided by contracts that must be respected,” Pierpaolo Bombardieri, the secretary general of Italy’s Uil union said in a statement.
Mr. Bombardieri called the emails “unacceptable” and the method “aberrant.” Italy’s unions wrote to the Italian government and the U.S. Embassy asking for explanations.
For now, the ground rule appears to be that Italian civilians must answer the email only if they receive it directly from the U.S. government — not if it is forwarded to them, as happened at Aviano and at least one other base in Italy, in the city of Vicenza. But it remained unclear whether the Department of Defense was going to reach out to Italian workers directly.
61 days into this madhouse regime and other countries are stonewalling the United States. We may very well be observing the transformation of America from the Shining City to the passed over slum neighborhood that nobody wants to drive through, and if they have to drive through it, they don’t stop.
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America.
The Pariah State.
Brought to you by Trusk/Mump.
And the most stupid people that have ever existed, MAGA.
The once-great USA is getting exactly what it voted for: membership in the Pariah Club, alongside such luminaries as Russia, N Korea, Iran and, shamefully, Israel. The civilised world was laughing at the US for electing Trump the first time; now they’re despising us.
Your first mistake was assuming Musk.and Trump.have souls to sell. Neither of them do. They are psychopaths, without conscience,,empathy,,and compassion. Musk.has flatout said that empathy is a,weakness. I suspect he feels the same way about a conscience. Where is Jiminy Cricket when we need him!