#$50000

Switching positions in the first round Harrison, NJ- The New York Red Bulls have made a trade with FC Dallas, as they have sent their 12th overall pick of the first round of the MLS Super Draft to Texas, and they have received $50,000 in GAM for this upcoming season, and $50,000 in GAM for the 2027 season along with this years Super Draft 21st overall pick from FC Dallas. New York Red Bulls…

The New York Times

Glenn Thrush and Devlin Barrett

Oct. 7th 2025

Pressed on Justice Department polarization, Bondi goes on the attack.

Pam Bondi’s approach on Tuesday to fielding hostile questions posed by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee about the perceived political weaponization of the Justice Department was simple and brutal: Don’t answer, just attack.

Ms. Bondi, who was openly defiant of the Democrats on the committee, attempted to cast more than four hours of stonewalling senatorial queries about decisions on her watch as an aggrieved defense of President Trump, herself and other administration appointees.

Ms. Bondi’s bombast, to a great extent, reflected a coordinated effort across the Trump administration to flip potentially damaging — or revealing — moments of public accountability into opportunities to savage political opponents.

Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee, opened the questioning by asking if the White House consulted Ms. Bondi on the deployment of federal troops to Chicago. She ignored the question and instead raised her voice to accuse Mr. Durbin, a 28-year veteran of the Senate who has delivered billions in criminal justice funding to his state, of disloyalty to his constituents.

“I wish you’d love Chicago as much as you hate President Trump,” she said.

Oversight hearings have always had elements of political theater. But the approach taken by Ms. Bondi, and previously by the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, has been different than that taken by any of their predecessors. It is characterized by a contemptuous refusal to cursorily address inconvenient questions and the use of prepared attacks against Democrats to change the subject and drown out criticism.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, asked her about the Justice Department’s decision to drop the investigation into Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, who was recorded in September 2024 accepting a bag with $50,000 in cash in an undercover F.B.I. investigation. “What became of the $50,000?” Mr. Whitehouse asked.

Ms. Bondi refused to answer the question, and instead attacked Mr. Whitehouse by demanding to know why he once took campaign donations from Reid Hoffman, a Democratic donor that Republicans have linked to the notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

None of the committee’s Republicans pressed her to provide answers.

On Wednesday, August 20th, the New York Red Bulls announced a trade with Toronto FC for an International Roster spot. New York will, in return, give $125,000 in 2025 General Allocation Money (GAM) and $50,000 in 2026 General Allocation Money (GAM) to Toronto FC. What they will do with this roster spot, we shall hopefully find out sometime in the future.

That's millions of people stuck in their lower income (not minimum wage, because these people are not the lazy ones) job field, and disproportionately high rent. And eventually there aren't cheaper apartments to move to. Families move further from the central metropolitan area, often into more poorly funded school districts, with fewer libraries, less accessible resources, fewer options to compare food prices.

Yeah, this all goes on and on. Nobody can fix it. We all gotta fix our own problems and stop blaming others. But the blame does belong squarely on others. We gotta wonder, why don't we, the common people or whatever we should be called, have more power? Why are we under all those thumbs? Why don't we take our power back? Gather together and change the systems until they function properly?

I still don't know. We're tired. We don't trust others to do their part once things get rolling.

Here's a proposition: It would be reasonable for jobs above entry-level to have a base pay of $1,000 per week. $1k/week is not bonkers whatsoever. Then we wouldn't all be paying half or more of our wages on rent all the time. "We can't" isn't an answer. We give them 40+ hours of our hard work, some 50 weeks per year. Really, $50k/year would be the lowest reasonable base pay for the majority of jobs. Not a minimum wage. But once you've got experience and valuable skills that make profits for all those companies, $50k should be a standard. Even if the company you work for can't advance you anywhere. After a few years, you're better than the entry-level employees. Higher quality, efficiency, and reliability. An employee worth retaining. Turnover costs money, it's inefficient.

The excuse that companies just can't afford to pay any more than they already do is plain false. Though one sticking point is that we've they've painted ourselves everyone into a corner. Consumers have less disposable income now than decades ago, in relation to cost of living, etc. That means consumers have been buying less for a long time. And/ or going deeper into debt. That's great for the banks, I guess. But overall, that's clearly not good for folks.

Doing the best we can isn't good enough, but that's because of the system we're in, not because we suck.

Wages can't just jump up suddenly. Anyone can figure that out. But we've got to move the needle somehow. Pointing at a third of the workforce and saying, "Well, those people don't deserve to make more," is what shiftless losers say. The kind of people who think that others having more means that they have less. Insisting what others do or don't deserve solves zero problems, and it's pathetic. Presuming a very weird kind of authority when they're irrelevant to the situation. It's got nothing to do with them, except to prop up their lame sense of self worth.

$50k per year + PTO, standard beginning/ base salary for experienced workers.

$1,000 per week standard for experienced wage earners. (And some PTO too, right? For fuck's sake!)

Partly, these are just nice round numbers. But the math is right. There are too many other numbers thrown around and too much focus on minimum wage, which just helps to reinforce bullshit talking points.

More people should be making $25/hr. That shouldn't sound high as the normal base pay for employees who know what the fuck they're doing, don't need micromanagement, and uphold professionalism in their workplace. The best employees support a positive atmosphere and refrain from adding stress to situations. They pitch in extra when they can, not because they were told to, but because it makes things run better, makes for happier customers, and makes management look good. But there are often no promotions available. Raises end up being pathetic, maybe just keeping up with inflation. Maybe.

Anyone who's been around even a couple average workplaces knows about all this, seen undervalued coworkers, or been one of those. Only so many can move up somewhere else.

Think of one of the managers at your neighborhood grocery chain location. One of the those who keeps a good attitude, cares about both customers and employees, and just makes the place better. Do they make as much as they deserve? What about the checker who has been stationed at the self checkout for as long as you can remember? It's not easy, if you hadn't noticed. They're hustling constantly to keep all the shitty kiosks going through their continual glitching. Underappreciated, and guaranteed underpaid. But their work is worth much more than their wage. The pharmacy is overworked.

We owe them all a great debt for helping to keep all of our lives going, but especially those at the top and the owners.

Well, this has been yet another rant. I was just looking at the numbers, you know?

$50k

$1k

$25.00