American workers need dignified uniforms



When you look at old photos, you notice a lot of different things. Different cars, different clothes, different kinds of houses. More suits on men, more dresses on women.

One affirms dignity. The other induces a sense of childlike silliness.

No iPads, no tattoos, blocky TVs that looked like furniture, and big long station wagons.

You also notice that the workers wore clothes that were a lot nicer. All across the board, the average work uniforms of the past were nicer than they are today. A grocery clerk from the old days dressed with greater dignity than half the people you might find at a wedding in 2024. And the average worker in 2024 wears a uniform that can’t possibly do anything other than depress him. It’s sad but true.

The store uniforms we see these days tend to be graphic T-shirts with stupid little designs on the back. Of course, I would love to see nicer uniforms because I want everyone to dress better, and I would much rather look at decent clothes than ugly clothes; the beautification of our society starts with ourselves, and we can all make a difference. But the argument for nicer store uniforms isn’t only about what’s pleasant for others to see. It’s about the dignity of the worker and the quality of his life.

If I worked at a store and my uniform was a bright blue graphic T-shirt with a cartoonish design on the back, I really wouldn’t feel very good about what I was wearing. If I had to wear this uniform every day, I would feel silly and stupid. Infantilized.

It would be hard to take myself and my job seriously. If I was stuck working some stupid job I hated, wearing some dumb silly shirt every day would only make the whole situation worse.

I’m sure an argument for these graphic T-shirt uniforms is comfort. I’m sure the workers say they are comfortable, and the owners want their workers to be comfortable. Our society worships comfort, after all. It’s one of our great idols in 2024. The road to slob-world is paved with comfort. And while, of course, comfort matters, it’s not the only thing that matters.

You can sacrifice dignity for the sake of comfort. We do it every day in our culture. Furthermore, it must be said that a graphic T-shirt isn’t necessarily more comfortable than a properly fitting 100% cotton button-up.

Look at old photos of the past to see what properly fitting uniforms should look like. Full-cut pants with room to move easily. Loosely fitting button-ups with ample fabric around the midsection, chest, and biceps. The sleeves were easily rolled up with no constriction or an overly tight fit. Simple, dark shoes. The modern world of the 20th century was built in this simple uniform.

These clothes are no less comfortable than a pair of jeans and a graphic T-shirt. In fact, they are, believe it or not, more comfortable. People just don’t realize it. And the difference between this simple, basic uniform and the infantilizing graphic T-shirt is night and day. One affirms dignity. The other induces a sense of childlike silliness.

Workers deserve dignity. I know when you read that, you might expect to read next about insurance, time off, and workplace safety and not clothing and style.

But clothes matter, and they matter to everyone. A more dignified workforce means a more dignified society, and we all deserve a more dignified society. Nicer uniforms — uniforms that affirm the dignity of man — don’t need to be expensive. They don’t need to be finely made or particularly fancy. They can be simple and utilitarian. They just need to be dignified and serious. They need to command some kind of authority and purpose.

This was essentially how all uniforms looked in the past. The goofball uniform wasn’t a thing. There was an unspoken assumption that a uniform should convey seriousness. That assumption followed another assumption that adults should convey seriousness as well. This was the basic order of society.

Times have changed. The uniforms aren’t serious today because the society isn’t serious today. Men today are more likely to wear clothes that make a joke than clothes that make a statement of seriousness. Strength and beauty are not considerations for most people today when putting together an outfit. They should be; they were for most of history, but not today.

All of this has a terribly negative impact on the general psychological state of people in the America of 2024, but it compounds for the worker whose uniform feels more like an insult to injury than anything else.

Why require workers to wear something that is stupid and undignified? If workers are required to wear a uniform, let it be a uniform of dignity. It’s better for the worker, better for the customer, and better for the general aesthetic health of our society.

Trump vows to eliminate taxes on overtime — a potential winner among some of 'the hardest-working citizens'



President Donald Trump vowed at his rally in Tuscon, Arizona, Thursday that he would eliminate all taxes on overtime pay — an unprecedented proposal from the federal government. This is part of a broader raft of proposed tax cuts, one of which is apparently so popular as to drive Kamala Harris to adopt it as her own.

"We will end all taxes on overtime," said Trump. "You know what that means? Think about it."

Trump suggested not only that Americans would have a greater incentive to work more if they knew the government wasn't skimming off the top but that businesses would have a easier time with recruitment and retention.

'It's time for the working man and woman to finally catch a break.'

"The people who work overtime are among the hardest-working citizens in our country. And for too long, no one in Washington has been looking out for them," continued Trump. "They're police officers, nurses, factory workers, construction workers, truck drivers, and machine operators. It's time for the working man and woman to finally catch a break."

The Labor Department under Trump issued a rule in 2019 making overtime pay available to an additional 1.3 million workers. It did so by raising the salary level that companies would have to pay in order to avoid paying workers at least 1.5 times their regular pay rate for work in excess of 40 hours a week.

Even though millions of Americans benefited, supposed labor activists, Democrats, and the liberal media criticized Trump's salary-level increase, suggesting it was not as generous as one of President Barack Obama's failed schemes.

Piggybacking on the success of Trump's rule, the Biden administration announced a final rule in April further increasing the salary threshold required to exempt workers from federal overtime pay requirements — from $36,568 to $43,888 by July 1, 2024, and to $58,656 by Jan. 1, 2025.

As a result of the 2019 and 2024 threshold increases, a great many Americans would be able to avoid forking over their hard-won overtime earnings to the government under Trump's proposed tax policy.

Reuters noted that while this proposal is a first from the federal government, Alabama paved the way this year, becoming the first state in the union to exclude overtime wages for hourly workers from state taxes. The move is, however, temporary.

According to the Tax Foundation, which has been tracking proposed tax policies on the campaign trail, Trump has said he would also:

  • exempt tips from income taxes;
  • lower the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 20% and lower the corporate income tax rate to 15% for companies that make their products in the United States;
  • make permanent his 2017 individual income tax cuts, which are now nearing expiration;
  • consider swapping out personal income taxes for increased tariffs on imports;
  • exempt Social Security benefits from income tax; and
  • impose a 60% tariff on imports from China.

It appears the Harris campaign did not take Trump's announcement well.

A Harris campaign spokesman said, "He is desperate and scrambling and saying whatever it takes to try to trick people into voting for him."

It is unclear whether Harris, who was recently exposed copying and pasting policies from her former running mate, will also claim this proposal for her own.

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Big Tech's AI shock troops came for us — are you next?



“I have terrible news, Josh. And I wanted you to know first,” said my friend and boss Jack Buckby on July 25.

Lancashire Hudson, the content creation agency he'd founded, had finally lost its battle with the bots.

There is no keeping your head down and working quietly as a conservative in media anymore. The left and its ever-more-powerful digital golem will find you and finish you.

Our cash-strapped clients had been increasingly turning to AI for the daily news, marketing, and other copy they needed for their ad-supported websites and newsletters. This writing wasn't nearly as effective, but it was far cheaper.

Overnight, Jack and I lost our jobs and our ability to pay our bills. Thirty talented, hard-working writers and editors in our company lost theirs, too.

The coming disruption

We often think of AI as a threat to manual labor or low-level service jobs, but the truth is it's got creatives like us squarely in its sights as well.

It's not as if we hadn't seen it coming. The immediate benefits of automating are all too clear, especially if a company is struggling. “AI is cheap, accessible, and easy," Jack tells me. "[Even if] it's not necessarily good."

That said, this quick fix could end up damaging the brand in the long run.

“it’s not the answer for businesses who want to maintain a good relationship with their audience and customers," says Jack.

"Ask yourself, when you pick up the phone to call a company and you’re greeted by a robot, how do you feel? If you were told that an article you read in a newspaper was generated by AI, would you feel compelled to read it still? No. The honest answer is 'no,' and if your audience and customers are humans, your content should be, too.”

It's this vision that kept Jack fighting — until the economic reality could no longer be denied.

A monster of their own making

While the whole media industry is feeling the pinch, companies out of step with dominant progressive views are particularly hard hit, many Lancashire Hudson clients among them.

“I’ve had clients’ websites completely destroyed by Google shutting off traffic from their news search engines for mildly criticizing the vaccine roll out. They didn’t post anything in opposition to the vaccine, but instead, opposition to the mandates — and it wasn’t even a view shared by most of the staff. It was a single op-ed. And the site was destroyed," says Jack.

This kind of Big Tech censorship is what finally did Lancashire Hudson in.

Jack has been through this before. If you’ve heard of him, it is probably because he was once the enfant terrible of the English far right.

As a young man from a working-class Northern English town, Jack fell in with an extreme crowd of angry, disaffected young men. They had reasons to be angry. What good-paying jobs were left had to be competed over with foreigners and “asylum seekers.” These young English men were told they were moral scum for being white, English, and blue collar.

That’s when Jack discovered the actual racism, anti-Semitism, and violence bubbling under the surface of his new “community.” As he grew up, he grew alarmed, and he pulled back into a more traditional conservative position.

This experience led him to a realization: It is the relentless social and economic punishment the left dishes out to conservatives and working people that is creating the “extremist far right” the left loves to hate. He tells the story in his book "Monster of Their Own Making."

Hiring the un-hirable

Jack built Lancashire Hudson specifically to offer work to people who have a hard time getting it.

His employees included Claire, a retired schoolteacher who lives in the Midwest and supplemented her small income with daily writing as she cares for her husband and disabled sister. And Denise, disabled and homebound but a quick and talented writer who can turn out perfect copy in 15 minutes. Her job with Jack was the first time in years that she made her own way instead of relying on benefits.

Jack has also reached out to those shut out from the job market for ideological reasons. Anton, for example, has a journalism degree but can’t find work in media because he’s been seen having conservative opinions in public. Patricia is a married mother with a new baby who relied on work at Lancashire Hudson after her English university pushed her out of a 10-year administrative role because she was not sufficiently woke-compliant.

Then there's me. At the end of 2022, I was pushed out of my 20-year career heading a consumer protection nonprofit when an internal coup branded me a racist, bigoted, misogynist transphobe for my personal, off-work political views. My job as editor with Lancashire Hudson kept me afloat.

The left's digital golem

In a way, losing these jobs is a second, indirect cancellation. There is no keeping your head down and working quietly as a conservative in media anymore. The left and its ever-more-powerful digital golem will find you and finish you. Take it from us.

We’re watching an entire industry eat itself alive. The problem is not only that humans are being pushed out of the field. If we think news is biased to the left now, how much worse will it get when we remember that AI models are being trained on the biased, leftist, partisan content that comes from traditional and legacy media?

As Jack puts it:

“When Google and Big Tech companies restrict visibility and traffic to businesses with which they do not agree, they destroy livelihoods. When they restrict advertising income, they say it’s OK to have one opinion but not OK to hold another. Ultimately, many businesses are being forced to make huge financial cuts just to stay alive, and in some instances, that means replacing workers with AI. The companies that toe the line might not have to. That’s not good for unifying the country, and it’s not good for our political discourse.”

We’re trying to retool and figure out a way to work again, but everyone is feeling blindly through this new world of increasing digital control and digitally created “content.”

I can’t tell you how to navigate this world because I’m learning as I go. But I hope you hear my warning: Your job, your career, is not safe, including all of you fellow “creatives." If you’re a conservative, your number is going to come up for cancellation quicker than others. Prepare yourself.

In the meantime, Jack and I are looking for those companies that want quality content produced, overseen, and quality-checked by real humans with real principles. All of us who care about excellence, truth, and accountability that works for a world of humans had better find each other soon.

How employers can make work work for moms



Recently, I spoke with Tim Carney, author of "Family Unfriendly," on the ways in which the corporate life and culture of America has made it difficult for families — especially big families — to thrive.

This thesis stuck with me, and it changed the way I’ve been thinking about the work-home dichotomy. Following this train of thought, I sought out Regina Bethencourt, founder and CEO of Tenuto Consulting, a company that provides research-based branding solutions for higher education and mission-based organizations.

Regina spoke to me about how she's organized her life and company to accommodate big families, and why she believes it is, in fact, possible to be a stay-at-home mom and a working professional — provided you have a little courage and creativity to spare.

— Helen Roy

“You can’t have it all” has been the common objection to sharing my goals for the personal and professional trajectory of my life. You must choose: Either you limit your number of children (or abandon the idea of being a mother altogether) and pursue a career path, or you settle in for a stay-at-home life usually complete with homeschooling, gingham dresses, and sourdough bread.

Both of these paths can be meritorious and deeply fulfilling in their own right, especially for women who feel a specific call to embody the entirety of these two lifestyles. But many women feel that the options are too limited. Those on the career side often lament that they don’t get to spend as much time with their children as they would like, while many women on the stay-at-home side feel a deep desire for a professional or intellectual outlet to expand that side of their person.

The job options for these moms in the middle are nearly nonexistent. Often, they will take jobs well below their skill set and pay grade just to find a little flexibility or a boss who won’t hound them for taking a day to stay at home with a kid with an ear infection. Others get caught up in multilevel marketing companies that especially target these moms who then end up exploited rather than supported.

It took building my own company, a branding and marketing firm, to find a job with the level of flexibility that would allow me to be as present as I need to be for my children yet still pursue a challenging professional career. As my company gained traction, I realized I could extend this opportunity to other women by inviting them to join my team and experience the same flexibility that I had been able to create for myself.

Now, as a team, we have a mission to change the way moms show up to work. Both internally, as we grow our client portfolio and hire more moms in the middle, and externally, as we hope to inspire other CEOs and employers to implement policies that work for moms.

Here are a few top tips that break open doors to opportunity for moms:

Stop tying compensation to hours

There is nothing more confining than the prevailing idea that our work has value according to the hours it took to complete it. In our field of branding, sometimes a logo idea comes from a sudden stroke of inspiration and is completed in 10 minutes. Other times, the concept takes longer, the inspiration isn’t there, and the final logo might start taking shape after a week or two of trial and error.

Is the second logo worth more than the first? No.

When an employee’s compensation is tied to hours worked, it naturally favors the employees who have the most hours available. Moms, because of the demanding physical and logistical challenges of motherhood, naturally have fewer hours available.

However, studies show that moms are substantially more productive at work than their counterparts. Which means if we offer moms work that is tied to deliverables instead of hours (for example: 10 social graphics and five flyers per week), moms have the option to be adequately and accurately compensated for their work, while ALSO spending less time working and more time with their kids. Win-win.

Full time should not mean Mon-Fri 9-5

Connected to the hours culture in the modern-day workplace is also the idea that work needs to be done at a certain time and in a certain place. While certainly some schedule coordination needs to happen to make sure there are times to discuss projects and ideas in person or virtually, the idea that work happens between 9-5 is a leftover from a bygone era.

At Tenuto, we require a minimum of only 20% of your availability to fall during traditional work hours and that’s only to allow for client calls or internal team meetings. You manage the rest of your availability according to what works for you and your schedule.

Some of our team members only work nights and weekends. Others work long days on Tuesdays and Wednesdays but unplug the rest of the week. As long as they hit their deliverables, they are free to set their schedule according to what works for them.

Build backups into your team structure

A major challenge that moms face in the working world is how to manage when things don’t go to plan, which is a frequent reality with the schedules and health of multiple children at play.

Employers have tried to solve this with subsidized backup childcare policies — which help but often aren’t ideal because they require either inviting a stranger into your home or dropping your toddler off at an unfamiliar location and hoping for the best. It’s not ideal, fundamentally, because there is no real equivalent backup for mom. Ask any kindergartner home with a fever.

Instead of backups for childcare, teams should have backups for work projects. If something happens to Sara, Catherine jumps in and takes over her deliverables, and vice versa. Everyone needs help from time to time, so we jump in to help others knowing that that same willingness will be there for us when the inevitable stomach bug hits. We’re humans, not production machines, and we treat each other as such.

Child friendly should actually mean child friendly

Child-friendly work culture often means that children are accepted as long as they are quiet, well-behaved, and appear with sufficient advance notice so that everyone else can brace themselves. We define child friendly as a work culture where babies are regularly nursed on client calls, the tousled head of a toddler who escaped from the babysitter may pop into the corner of the video screen, or an urgent “I need to call you back in 15 minutes” is a common occurrence.

We don’t pretend that moms can work without support. All of our team members use some degree of childcare, whether from a school, a family member, a babysitter, or a daycare program. But we also don’t pretend that moms can or should make their kids disappear in order to be more successful at work. There is always space for a break for a booboo kiss, a lunch picnic, or stories with mom before nap time.

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Another Democratic official's transvestic progeny arrested, this time over alleged anti-Israel hate crime



The 28-year-old daughter of a Democratic attorney in the Connecticut Attorney General's Office was arrested last week for allegedly making a show out of vandalizing an Israeli flag on private property in Sandy Hook.

Sarah Stofko, the transvestite daughter of Deputy Associate Attorney General Carolyn Signorelli, was charged with third-degree criminal mischief and third-degree intimidation based on bigotry or bias.

The Newtown Police Department indicated that officers responded to a home near the intersection of Church Hill Road and Walnut Tree Hill Road on Dec. 7, the first night of Hanukkah, following a report of vandalism of an Israeli flag. Officers quickly located the flag that had been torn down, then acquired a description and registration for the suspect's vehicle.

Police ultimately identified and contacted Stofko — a self-described web developer who refers to herself as Isaac — prompting her to surrender.

— (@)

Following Stofko's arrest, Newton Police Lt. Scott Smith said, "Our police department has no tolerance for any crimes that have the potential to create fear and anxiety amongst members of our community."

Chief David Kullgren reiterated, "We unequivocally reject any criminal activities that may instill fear or distress among our residents."

The town's first selectman, Republican A. Jeffrey Capeci, denounced the vandalism, stating, "By flying a flag or having a sign on one's private property we exercise free speech protected by the first amendment. Be it an American, Ukrainian or an Israeli flag, a lawn sign that is political or the school of choice for a child’s higher education – the list is long."

"As Americans, we have the right to express our views and preferences, but we do not have the right to silence or intimidate others," added Capeci.

The Republican administrator highlighted the contributions of Jewish members of Newtown and noted, "It is how we respond to these instances that define us as a community, not the actions of any one individual."

The News-Times noted that Stofko's alleged destruction of property comes amidst a reported rise in anti-Semitic incidents across Connecticut. Stacey Sobel, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, indicated there had been over 1,400 anti-Semitic incidents reported since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel.

Within hours of Stofko's alleged hate crime, a masked radical climbed the Hanukkah menorah in New Haven Green to hang a Palestinian flag, prompting condemnation from Gov. Ned Lamont (D) and other officials, reported WTNH-TV.

Stofko, whose antipathy appears to be widely shared by many of her mother's fellow party members, is due in Danbury Superior Court on Dec. 21.

Stofko is not the only transvestite child of a prominent Democrat to act upon the views prevalent among the party's progressive members in recent months.

Blaze News previously reported that Jared Dowell, the adult son of House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), was arrested and charged in January with assault and battery on a Boston police officer inflicting serious bodily injury, vandalizing a historic monument, damaging property by tagging, and resisting arrest.

Dowell, who claims to be non-binary, defaced a historic monument in the Boston Common with anti-police slogans commonly used by leftists. He got off easy, thanks to a deal with prosecutors, requiring that he essentially affirm his guilt with an apology letter to the officer he assaulted, then complete 30 hours of community service.

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Want to know the reality of Gen Z entering the workforce? These viral videos tell all



Generation Z, or “Zoomers,” are all grown up now.

Well, they’re grown up in the literal sense; as far as maturity goes, many of them are lagging far behind.

Lauren Chen examines several videos that have gone viral of Zoomers in the workforce, and let’s just say that some will make you cringe while others will make you sad.

The first video captures a Gen Z employee meeting with a superior over the issue of “wearing [her] earphones or airpods repeatedly after several coaching conversations.”

“I'm just not going to say anything or sign anything without a lawyer, and I'm very, very, very, very appalled that you're attacking me again because of my race. … This is all because I'm black, and it's really, really sad that you guys are doing this to me,” the employee says, before she starts wailing uncontrollably.

The manager, exercising admirable restraint, responds with, “I’m so sorry that you feel that way. That’s not our intention.”

“I can't work the rest of today; I need to go home,” she sobs.

Lauren calls the situation one of the “most entitled and sensitive workplace Zoomer reactions" she's ever seen.

“This woman wastes no time in playing the race card while simultaneously just deflecting throughout the whole thing, and it's like, oh my goodness, you are why older generations make fun of Gen Z,” she sighs.

The second video features another Gen Z woman who Lauren says “reeks of entitlement” explaining her frustrations with her serving job.

“I have my literal business marketing degree that put me in a cute $80,000 in debt,” she complains, before explaining that she makes “more money serving sushi rolls” than what she could earn in an entry-level marketing position.

“The jobs that are like a cute $150-$200,000 a year – I'm not getting those,” she rants. “I'm … going against, you know, corporate a** America people with so much experience, [and] all I got is my degree. You know people say, ‘Get your degree,’ but then they don't talk about how you need experience – the degree was the experience!”

“I don't think it's wrong for young people to complain about the high costs of tuition because that is a problem,” says Lauren.

“But also it sounds like this woman does have the opportunity to get experience – to get an entry-level job in her field – but she simply doesn't want to.”

“The idea is you get experience, you get training, you work your way up, and eventually, you are eligible for those jobs that pay $150-$200,000,” she explains, but that concept is clearly lost on this Zoomer.

The last video features another young Gen Z woman airing her grievances about her job, but this time, Lauren thinks her complaints are “pretty reasonable” and perhaps shine a light on the toxicity of the traditional workplace.

“This is my first job, like my first 9-to-5 job after college, and I'm in person, and I'm commuting in the city, and it takes me forever to get there” because “there's no way I'm going to be able to afford living in the city right now,” she cries, admitting that her complaints have “nothing to do with [her] job” but are solely tied to the “9-to-5 schedule.”

“I don’t have time to do anything … I don’t have time or energy to cook dinner, I don’t have energy to work out,” she explains. “How do you have friends? … How do you have time for, like, dating? I don't have time for anything.”

“I don't think it makes someone a sheltered snowflake to like their job, to want their job, to enjoy their field, but to also simultaneously say that ‘Hey, these aren't very good working conditions,'" says Lauren.

“I think there's also a toxic element to the attitude that some older generations had for work, where it's like, you literally have to live to work [and] you are loyal to your company, who at the same time would probably be more than happy to throw you under the bus or outsource you to India,” she continues.

“What older generations need to understand is that the world is different than when they were younger, the workplace is different, the economy is different.”

Regardless of how you feel about these specific Gen Z reactions to the workforce, the videos are well worth watching. Check them out for yourself below.


Want more from Lauren Chen?

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