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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

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Best Buy furloughs 51,000 workers because of Wuhan panic shutdown

The beatings will continue until morale improves: Best Buy yesterday announced that it is furloughing 51,000 workers because their stores have been shuttered by the government imposed lockdown over the Wuhan flu.

Best Buy announced Wednesday the tech chain will furlough roughly 51,000 hourly and part-time store employees nationwide beginning Sunday as the company grapples with the business impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

In addition to furloughing the workers, who include “nearly all part-time employees,” an unspecified amount of corporate staff members have volunteered to work reduced hours and, in turn, take pay cuts, while others have volunteered themselves for the temporary furloughs, Best Buy announced Wednesday.

The company will provide health benefits for three more months. No promises after that.

You know, if the company goes under, caused by the government-imposed shutdown, wouldn’t that be a kind of taking of property? And doesn’t the violate the fifth amendment of the Bill of Rights?

Oh, right, that doesn’t count anymore, according to the Democratic governor of New Jersey. I forgot.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

One comment

  • Cotour

    The legal technicality here IMO is the declared national emergency by the president. Everything flows from that Federal executive order.

    So is it a taking under these declared “Special” “Emergency” circumstances?

    That is a very good question.

    And some of these governors in this state of emergency are all too anxious to push their executive powers to the max. And the worst ones are generally Liberal Democrats. They love it.

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