The next Contractor to manage LLNL

While debating which companies should or should not manage LLNL for the next contract, shouldn’t current LLNS employees and LLNS and UC/LLNL retirees unite to form a functioning working group to frame out workplace and retirement benefit criteria for our elected officials to review and consider with the NNSA? Or, just let whatever happens happen again?

Free UC tuition

 UC system to cover tuition for California residents who are Native Americans

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CROYgDf0ucw

A bump for LANL

 https://news.yahoo.com/lanl-over-1b-bump-proposed-150300706.html

Putin just handed LANL a cool billion!

Apr. 20—A hefty spending increase proposed for Los Alamos National Laboratory would push its budget to an unprecedented level as federal agencies forge ahead with efforts to ramp up production of nuclear bomb cores to modernize the arsenal.

The Los Alamos lab's funding would jump to about $4.6 billion from this year's $3.5 billion under the U.S. Energy Department's early budget requests for the 2023 fiscal

Ok a nillion is nothing in Musk money but still pretty dam good. By the way did you know Musk majored in physics in college, of course he dropped out his Ph.d in Apllied physcis in Stanford but I think he is still did ok. Kids remember to major in STEM

Will Bechtel be out?

 Will the NNSA root out Bechtel from the next LLNL contract winner as they did with TRIAD? If so, why?

Pentagon and top weapon makers to meet

 Pentagon asks top 8 U.S. weapons makers to meet on Ukraine. 

The Pentagon will host leaders from the top eight U.S. weapons manufacturers on Wednesday to discuss the industry's capacity to meet Ukraine's weapons needs.... 
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/pentagon-asks-top-8-u.s.-weapons-makers-to-meet-on-ukraine-sources

NATO expansion

 Despite Russian Warnings, Finland and Sweden Draw Closer to NATO

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/world/europe/finland-sweden-nato-russia-ukraine.html

Federal contractor vaccine mandate

 Appeals court sees high bar to restoring federal contractor vaccine mandate https://federalnewsnetwork.com/contracting/2022/04/appeals-court-sees-high-bar-to-restoring-federal-contractor-vaccine-mandate/

Abormal event at Carlsbad

 Workers evacuated from area of Carlsbad nuclear waste repository after 'abnormal event' https://sports.yahoo.com/workers-evacuated-area-carlsbad-nuclear-040553310.html

The pits at LANL

 “There is absolutely no reason to expand pit production capacity in light of Russia’s war in Ukraine,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “That would suggest the United States should have a larger nuclear arsenal than we currently have, and that is a dangerous knee-jerk response.”

Hmm, how does this "suggest" that? Do these people ever look into why we are making pits? My guess this Kimball is not a total idiot in which case he is just lying to make sound like we are "expanding" the arsenal.

Greg Mello never seems to learn his lesson. Over and over again he goes to "labs are bad for New Mexico", besides the small number of NYC divorcees that live in Santa Fe no one in New Mexico buys this. You have families with generation after generation who have worked at the lab, had contracts with lab, or family members at the labs. Whenever he says this it just turns native New Mexicans away. These people have a lot of say with the local government and do not and never have agreed with Mellos assessment that LANL and Sandia economically hurt New Mexico. Yet after all these years he goes with the same set of arguments that ultimately it hurt his cause.

At least Mello is no longer bringing out crazy statements about the economics of New Mexico from Eric Kuershner who has the most backwards view of economics that he comes across like economics version of the flat earth person. It is like he took a first year college book on economics and inverted every single basic notion of economics principles but since he uses the terms that economists use it must be true. It is like when flat earth people that say stuff like inverse square law, equilibrium, pressure, bouncy and density, and mix the 

terms up, misinterpret them, and put them together in ways to make no sense but since they used these terms the earth is flat!!

Eric does the same but he uses terms from economics but he clearly has no idea what they actually mean or how they relate to each other. I suspect that he got kicked out of graduate school in economics for rather obvious reasons but since he can claim he studied economics in some capacity it fools the weak minded like Mellow who think he must know something.

LANL mission in the spotlight

The war in Ukraine has put Los Alamos National Lab’s nuclear-weapons mission in the spotlight. 

https://nmpoliticalreport.com/2022/03/24/the-war-in-ukraine-has-put-los-alamos-national-labs-nuclear-weapons-mission-in-the-spotlight/

LLNS Pension COLA

Given this years inflation rate what might our LLNS pension % COLA be this Summer?