February 12, 2021 6:57 AM
Morning Reads for Friday, February 12, 2021
- Our grief runs deep.
- This can’t happen fast enough.
- GT Savannah may become a film studio.
- So funny, on so many levels.
- What could go wrong?
- Hackers hack everything.
- Where is Issac Asimov when you need him?
- I’ll take “What’s a great way to honor Alex Trebek?” for 500.
- RIP Christopher Plummer.
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Ginny
Get off my lawn.
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“What could go wrong?”
What the heck are you saying? It sounds good to me.
“Infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci on Thursday predicted an “open season” for coronavirus vaccinations by April for “anyone” in the general population.
“I would imagine by the time we get to April, that will be what I would call for [a lack of] better wording, ‘open season.’ Namely, virtually everybody and anybody in any category could start to get vaccinated,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a segment of NBC’s Today show.
President Biden’s chief medical adviser, however, cautioned that after that, “it would likely take several more months, just logistically, to get vaccine into people’s arms.”
Incompetence, plain and simple:
“Frustrated by a groundswell of complaints back home, state lawmakers from both parties have lined up behind an effort to place a new governor-appointed staffer in the state Department of Labor who would share authority with the state’s elected GOP labor commissioner.
The agency was overwhelmed early in the pandemic when a historic number of people suddenly out of work filed for unemployment. Legislators have continued to say they are hearing from constituents who are still struggling to access unemployment benefits…
Labor Commissioner Mark Butler, who has served in that role for a decade, puzzled lawmakers when he said he did not need additional state aid in this year’s budget even as their constituents complained of long waits for payments and trouble reaching anyone at the agency.
And Butler attracted more legislative scrutiny after the state auditor said the commissioner had not provided requested unemployment documents in the time requested, threatening the state’s prized AAA bond rating…
Jason Kilgore of Danville applied for unemployment benefits last February after he was let go from his job as a supervisor at the YKK AP America Inc. manufacturing facility in Dublin. He has struggled to find work with the pandemic ongoing.
He exhausted his regular unemployment and then his Georgia State Extended Benefits program ran out Dec. 5. He ran into trouble when he applied for Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation. After several phone calls and emails to the Department of Labor and Butler’s office, he said he received a determination letter but is still awaiting payment.
When he calls the labor department during business hours, he gets a voicemail saying there are technical problems. When he calls after hours, he gets a voicemail telling him to try back during business hours.
“It’s just there is absolutely no communication,” he said. “It’s like they don’t care. They go home to a family that’s taken care of. I understand this has been overwhelming and the nation as a whole was unprepared, but consideration of our concerns is all anyone really asks for.”
https://georgiarecorder.com/2021/02/11/lawmakers-target-labor-chief-for-oversight-after-jobless-benefit-snafus/
One fundamental problem is that I believe he’s had this attitude from the beginning:
“All the experts on Georgia unemployment are already working here,” Butler said in an interview Tuesday. “So, hiring somebody off the street is not going to be any help. To me, it’s not a very helpful or fruitful proposal.”
Except…there’s a concept that someone who is Commissioner of Labor should fully understand– it’s called “training”. “Trai–ning”.
I mean, if he can’t train people in his own Dept., how can he be expected to understand job training programs at all statewide?
Yes, training new hires takes time and money and attention, and yes, the Dept. was busy. But if he had hired a small percentage increase last February or early March, and dedicated them to training, and then kept that process up, how many more experts would there be now? How much would the backlogs have been reduced?
Oh, pandemic’s winding down and now you have a number of experts you can’t keep on staff? Guess what- you now have a supply of training experts that can fill in job retraining posts in private sector, or help with appeals, or frankly, move to any number of government admin positions.
It’s a real palm-to-forehead moment.
Everyone’s going to Mars.
Missions from China and United Arab Emirates entered Martian orbit this week, and next Thursday the USA’s Perseverance will join them.
Later the Chinese and USA will try to land a rover from their orbiters.
Curiosity is the only rover currently working on Mars, and it’s going strong in its 10th year.
https://earthsky.org/space/missions-to-mars-uae-hope-china-tianwen-1
Here’s a podcast on the ‘essential geopolitics’ of Mars missions.
https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/essential-geopolitics-race-mars
Is the proposed launch site near Savannah still a possibility or was it always moonbeams?
Is the proposed launch site near Savannah still a possibility or was it always moonbeams?
Are you talking about Camden county?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceport_Camden
I don’t think the FAA will approve them since they will launch over folks homes and Cumberland Island..
The robot bill of rights story is from a website that has been inactive for almost 3 years.
which means it’s probably still good and valid fodder for Facebook outrage posts…