Tag Archives: labor

Inside the $7 Million Fight to Tax Soda in San Francisco

by SadyeMcGahan Posted on October 8, 2014

Mother Jones

After a high-profile battle in New York, the front line in the War on Soda has moved to Northern California: next month, voters in San Francisco and Berkeley will consider whether to levy major taxes on sugary beverages.

Measure D and Proposition E sound like ordinary, small-time municipal ballot items, but in the past few months, they’ve become subjects of national attention. For Big Soda, defeating the tax in the liberal, health-conscious Bay Area would be their ultimate triumph—and kill hopes for similar taxes in other places. The American Beverage Association—lobbying arm for Pepsi and Coca-Cola—has poured Super Big Gulp–sized streams of cash into these contests: they’ve spent $7.7 million thus far fighting San Francisco’s Proposition E alone. It’s already the second most expensive ballot measure campaign in the city, and could easily break the record.

Proposition E was proposed by San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener and it’d place a two-cent per ounce tax on sugary beverages. (Berkeley’s Measure D proposes a one-cent tax.) It’s specific about what constitutes a taxable sugary beverage: soft drinks, energy drinks, sports drinks and juices will be subject to the tax, while milk, syrups, and alcohol will be exempt. Distributors of the drinks are meant to cover the hikes, but they’re likely to pass that cost onto retailers, so consumers will end up paying the price. So, if you’re buying a 21-ounce Coke in the city, you can expect to pay 42 cents more. If Prop E passes, San Francisco would become the first city in the country to tax soda.

Supporters say all those Cokes will generate over $30 million in revenue per year, which would be used to fund nutrition, fitness, and other public health programs in public schools and elsewhere. Beyond that, it’s projected to reduce consumption of sugary drinks by 30 percent, according to San Francisco city economist Ted Egan. All in all, Prop E seems to have addressed some of the issues that made past soda taxes hard to swallow: In nearby Richmond, a measure was sunk because it didn’t specify what drinks could be taxed, and in El Monte, Calif., their bill didn’t specify how revenue would be allocated.

Though it’s arguably one of the best-crafted soda taxes to be put to vote, the Prop E campaign has been competitive, to put it lightly. Thus far, it’s been rife with deception and nasty attacks on both sides. Buoyed by its multi-million-dollar warchest, the No on E camp has blanketed the city with ads that evoke typical anti-nanny-state rallying cries. Big Soda has funded a group called Californians for Beverage Choice, which has put up signs and sent spokesmen on TV to argue that “consumers should be able to make the choice for themselves without taxes or regulation trying to influence their behavior.”

The No on E campaign also focuses on the high cost of living in San Francisco, calling the soda tax a “regressive tax” that would disproportionately hurt low-income people. The soda lobby has been leaning on another front group, the appealingly-named Coalition for an Affordable City, to make that case. It’s put up billboards across the city featuring local shopkeepers who oppose the measure, and sponsored TV ads like this one:

The San Francisco Bay Guardian investigated, however, and found that many of the 700-plus retailers who are listed as opponents of Prop E actually favor it. The Guardian claims that the beverage lobby allegedly dispatched canvassers to get local shopkeepers to oppose the tax, without mentioning exactly what it was, or that their businesses would be included on a public list. The Guardian also alleged that the groups endorsing a no vote—they appear during the ad—were paid off in exchange. “The Young Democrats, who endorsed No on the Sugary Beverage Tax, got a whopping $20,000 for their troubles,” it said.

The Yes on E coalition, led by a group called Choose Health San Francisco, has also accused the measure’s opponents of being deliberately dishonest. In a formal complaint to the San Francisco Ethics Commission, Choose Health said the No on E committee didn’t disclose how much money it has received, and has failed to add a disclaimer that the American Beverage Association has been funding their campaign. Michelle Parker, a PTA member and supporter of E, called the soda lobby’s tactics “personally offensive.” The opposition has denied wrongdoing, and spokesman Roger Salazar countered by accusing E’s supporters of “going around, harassing our supporters and bullying them.”

For some, it might be enough to look at the millions that Big Soda has (and will) spend, and conclude that Proposition E is doomed. While it’s true the lobby has a lot of money—and some of the best consultants in the business—the measure’s supporters are hardly a ragtag bunch. Backers have raised nearly $300,000—including $50,000 from billionaire donors Lisa and John Pritzker—which is enough to mount a competitive campaign. And the political consultancy firm Erwin & Muir—which boasts a 90% success rate, according to Politico—is working for the yes camp, pro bono.*

Proposition E will need to be approved by at least two-thirds of voters to become law. Polling has found support hovering around 50%, but it could receive a bump after the San Francisco Chronicle endorsed the measure last weekend. Things could easily get nastier as Election Day nears.

Even if it fails, many are betting that its cross-bay counterpart, Measure D, will succeed in Berkeley. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote that “If a soda tax can’t pass in the most progressive city in America, it can’t pass anywhere. Big Soda knows that, which is why it’s determined to kill it here.”

The measure’s passage might not spark a nationwide movement—the ABA’s Salazar was quick to say Berkeley is “not a precedent-setter”—but it’s dangerous enough that his bosses have spent over $2 million to stop the tax there. And it’s dangerous enough to have merited national attention. If both Prop E and Measure D fail, the idea of the soda tax may go flat for years. But if one of them passes, it could very well be coming to a ballot box near you.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the name of the political consultancy firm.

Source – 

Inside the $7 Million Fight to Tax Soda in San Francisco

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Inside the $7 Million Fight to Tax Soda in San Francisco

The Ever Evolving Saga of the Philadelphia Flyers Ice Girls

by LavadaGrattan Posted on October 2, 2014

Mother Jones

The NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers have been embroiled in controversy over the past few days—not because of anything hockey-related, but because of the team’s treatment of its ice girls, the women who clean the ice in crop tops and short shorts during stoppages in play. After the Flyers’ ice girls were replaced with “ice men” earlier this fall and fans booed relentlessly, the team announced Tuesday that the ice girls would be reinstated.

A little background: For years, several NHL teams have employed women who, in addition to shoveling ice, are responsible for things like greeting fans at the doors and leading cheers on the sidelines. Earlier this year, after writing an article about how five NFL cheerleading squads had sued their teams for labor violations (examples include having to pass a “jiggle test”—more on that here), I received an email from a former Flyers ice girl. “Speaking from personal experience,” she wrote, “ice girls are treated very similarly.” I went on to speak with three ice girls from the Flyers, and four from the Los Angeles Kings, who were then competing for the Stanley Cup.

Read more from MoJo about life as an ice girl.

The Flyers ice girls had mixed experiences overall but corroborated a few disturbing trends, which I wrote about in a June article. They were paid $50 per game, with their game-day duties lasting about seven hours. They got cold when greeting fans at the doors in skimpy uniforms, but were told that they couldn’t put jackets on. In 2012, when the Flyers hosted a three-day outdoor festival called the Winter Classic, they walked around in shorts, wearing two pairs of stockings, in 20-degree weather. They weren’t allowed to eat in public, despite the long hours and cold.

When I asked both Kings and Flyers ice girls why they continued to do the work, the response was unanimous: Despite the working conditions, there was something uniquely thrilling about being the center of attention on the ice, about being icons to a community of fans.

At the team’s first preseason game of the year, on September 22, the Flyers surprised fans with a change: The ice girls had been eliminated, and in their place, a team of men in bright orange jackets cleaned the ice. The team gave no reason for the change, and as the video below suggests, fans weren’t too happy about it.

At the game three days later, more booing:

In the meantime, I spoke with a couple of former ice girls about the team’s reactions. “The ones that actually wanted to try out weren’t too happy that there wasn’t going to be a team this year,” said one. “They thought it was unfair. I couldn’t care less. I don’t know why you’d want to go back to that abusive relationship.”

One veteran acknowledged that the issues from my June article were valid, and “sometimes it sucks that we have to stand outdoors in the cold.” But still, she had been thinking about trying out for the team again, and she was frustrated with herself and her teammates for having complained: “I’m sure you talked to some of the girls that do come back every year and they shot us all in the foot by expressing their unhappiness. I’m also guilty of that. Look where it got us.”

The Flyers maintained their radio silence until the third game, on Tuesday night. As fans started to boo the ice men, a sign appeared on the scoreboard announcing tryouts for—you guessed it—a new team of ice girls. Fans roared in approval.

On the ice team’s website, candidates are encouraged to submit a photo and résumé and come to auditions this Sunday with “professional-looking hair and make-up.” Applicants will be judged, among other things, on their ability to skate, turn, stop, do crossovers, and “push a wheel barrel on/off the ice surface”

Still, the response to the team’s announcement on Twitter wasn’t entirely enthusiastic. A sample of reactions:

Of course, the fans’ reactions, and the dozens of articles about the Flyers ice team, stem from bigger, messier questions: What should we make of ice girls and cheerleaders in 2014? What about the women who want to cheer? And what happens if those women also happen to have some complaints about the job?

Regardless, it seems that most reasonable folks would support simple changes, like paying ice girls more than $50 for seven hours of work, and maybe even letting them put layers on if they’re unbearably cold. But when I emailed Ike Richman, the VP of public relations for the team, to ask if the ice team’s working conditions or pay would change this year, he simply replied, “The organization has declined to answer any of your detailed questions. Thanks.”

Source article – 

The Ever Evolving Saga of the Philadelphia Flyers Ice Girls

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Pines, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Ever Evolving Saga of the Philadelphia Flyers Ice Girls

How Australia Became the Dirtiest Polluter in the Developed World

by KKMBrigette Posted on September 26, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This story originally appeared in Slate and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Australians like to think of themselves as green. Their island country boasts some 3 million square miles of breathtaking landscape. They were an early global leader in solar power. They’ve had environmental regulations on the books since colonial times. And in 2007 they elected a party and a prime minister running on a “pro-climate” platform, with promises to sign the Kyoto Protocol and pass sweeping environmental reforms. All of which makes sense for a country that is already suffering the early effects of global warming.

And yet, seven years later, Australia has thrown its environmentalism out the window—and into the landfill.

The climate-conscious Labor Party is out, felled by infighting and a bloodthirsty, Rupert Murdoch–dominated press that sows conspiracy theories about climate science. In its place, Australians elected the conservative Liberal Party, led by a prime minister who once declared that “the climate argument is absolute crap.”

In the year since they took office, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his Liberal-led coalition have already dismantled the country’s key environmental policies. Now they’ve begun systematically ransacking its natural resources. In the process, they’ve transformed Australia from an international innovator on environmental issues into quite possibly the dirtiest country in the developed world. And in a masterful whirl of the spin machine, they’ve managed to upend public debate by painting climate science as superstition and superstition as climate science. (We should note here that one of us grew up in Australia.)

The country’s landmark carbon tax has been repealed. The position of science minister has been eliminated. A man who warns of “global cooling” is now the country’s top business adviser. In November, Australia will host the G-20 economic summit; it plans to use its power as host to keep climate change off the official agenda.

If the environment has become Australia’s enemy, fossil fuels are its best friend once again. Two months after it struck down the carbon tax, the government forged a deal with a fringe party led by a mining tycoon to repeal a tax on mining profits. It appointed a noted climate-change skeptic—yes, another one—to review its renewable energy targets. Surprise: He’s expected to slash them. Independent modeling in a study commissioned by the Climate Institute, Australian Conservation Foundation, and WWF-Australia finds that the cuts to renewable energy won’t reduce Australians’ energy bills. They will, however, gift the country’s coal and gas industry another $8.8 billion US

At a time when solar power is booming worldwide, sunny Australia is rolling back its state-level subsidies (despite domestic success) and canceling major solar projects. Meanwhile, the government has given the go-ahead to build the nation’s largest coal mine, with an eye toward boosting coal exports to India.

Did we mention that Australians’ per-capita carbon emissions are the highest of any major developed country in the world? Welcome to the Saudi Arabia of the South Pacific. No, Australia isn’t a theocracy, and oil isn’t the source of its fossil-fuel riches. But it is the world’s second-largest exporter of coal and third-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, and minerals and fuels account for nearly 50 percent of its export revenues. Its per-capita carbon emissions actually exceed those of Saudi Arabia. And its behavior of late is beginning to bear an ugly resemblance to those petro-states whose governments seem to exist chiefly to guarantee the spectacular profits of the fossil-fuel industry.

The skies aren’t the only realm that Australia is rapidly polluting. After all, the waste that the country is dredging up in new mines and coal port expansions has to go somewhere. Why not dump it on the Great Barrier Reef? (This month, facing a PR disaster, the mining consortium in charge of that particular project reversed its decision and will likely request permission to dump the dredge inland instead.)

The carbon tax became Australia’s equivalent of Obamacare.

“Let’s see,” Australian leaders must wake up wondering every morning: “What natural wonder could we trash today?” At the top of that list is the pristine Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, nearly two-thirds of which the new government pledged to open to commercial logging. Environmentalists argued the logging would harm threatened species such as the swift parrot, the wedge-tailed eagle, and the iconic Tasmanian devil. Those concerns were waved aside by the state government, which, like the federal government, is controlled by the Liberals. Fortunately, their plans were thwarted when UNESCO rebuffed their attempt to repeal the forest’s World Heritage protections.

How the Liberals and their coalition partners have undone so many environmental policiesin such a short time is a study in the power of biased media and irrational thinking.

From the moment the pro-climate Labor Party took power in 2007, opposition leaders and pundits made its environmental policies the focal point of their political attacks. Even environmental policies established under previous Liberal regimes became politically polarized as conservatives recast environmental policies as “job-destroyers.” The carbon tax turned into Australia’s equivalent of Obamacare as the opposition sought a wedge with which to pry apart the Labor Party’s coalition with the environmentally focused political party, the Greens. In some ways, environmental policies are even more vulnerable to being cast as job-killers than health care policies are, because the benefits are less tangible to the individual.

But Abbott and his allies haven’t just turned the public against environmental regulations with threats of economic doom. They’ve also worked hard to shake the public’s trust in climate science. And they’ve done it in a way that would surprise most Americans: by comparing environmentalists to religious kooks.

Green politicians, climate change activists, and even scientists have been painted as modern incarnations of a hated early-20th-century Australian archetype: the holier-than-thou, anti-gambling, anti-alcohol religious wowser. Someone who, according to professor Ken Inglis, “prayed on his knees on Sunday and preyed on his neighbours the rest of the week.”

This line of attack began as early as 2010, when Abbott was in the parliamentary opposition. In a television interview, he said of then–Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s climate change policies, “I am not as evangelical about this as Prime Minister Rudd is. I am not theological about this the way Prime Minister Rudd is.”

In a 2012 op-ed titled “Losing their religion as evidence cools off,” in Rupert Murdoch’s national newspaper, the Australian, Abbott’s top business adviser wrote: “When Mother Nature decided in 1980 to change gears from cooler to warmer, a new global warming religion was born, replete with its own church (the UN), a papacy, (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and a global warming priesthood masquerading as climate scientists.”

Embracing the analogy, the former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard gave a speech at a U.K. fracking conference in 2013 titled “One religion is enough,” in which he called action on climate change “a substitute religion.” Interestingly, while the global-warming-as-religion line probably wouldn’t play as well stateside, it seems that the US-based think tank the Heartland Institute has played a key role in funding Australia’s denial movement.

Also instrumental in sowing doubt and apathy has been Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which owns about two-thirds of Australia’s metropolitan press and the dominant dailies in most state capitals. According to a study by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, coverage of the former Labor government’s climate-change policies by News Corp. papers was 82 percent negative.

Even so, belief in climate change remains relatively high among Australian voters. According to a 2014 Lowy Institute poll, 45 percent of Australians now see global warming as a “serious and pressing problem,” up 5 points since 2013. (Forty percent of Americans believe it to be a major threat, a 2013 Pew Research poll found.) But belief is not the same as action.

The conservatives’ cultivated agnosticism about climate issues is abetted by the nation’s general indifference about what happens in the “Outback.” Australians have long turned a blind eye toward the 70 percent of the country that is arid bushland and the small number of people who live there. Global mining companies like Rio Tinto run desert fiefdoms in the Northern Territory that are larger than Washington, D.C. The miners themselves—largely fly-in, fly-out workers—barely live in the remote, often indigenous, communities of Western Australia, the Northern Territory, or Queensland whose land they’re gutting and whose small towns they’re destroying. Many commute from Sydney and Melbourne, or even New Zealand and Bali.

Historically, this apathy extends beyond mining. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the government allowed the British to conduct nuclear tests and blast Western Australia’s Monte Bello Islands and parts of South Australia. And just this August, the conservative minister for defense told US Secretary of State John Kerry that the American military was “welcome to use the ‘open spaces’ of the Northern Territory” for their bases and military exercises. (There’s been a US Marine base in Darwin for years.) Imagine the United States gifting Alaska to the Canadian army for war games.

There are some who would like to estrange this swath of the country even further from Australia’s coastal population centers. Mining magnate Gina Rinehart, one of the richest women in the world, has lobbied for the continent’s northern third to be declared a “special economic zone” with reduced taxes, a lower minimum wage, and scant regulation.

If Australians have grown apathetic toward the use of their country, it is fair to point out that it seems equally apathetic toward them. Beautiful as it is, it’s a harsh land in which to make a home. It’s often on fire, usually in drought, and when the streams aren’t bone dry, they’re flooding—all natural disasters that are already being exacerbated by global warming.

Let’s hope that the rapacious policies of the current government represent only a temporary bout of insanity. If the Australian people cannot recover some of their earlier regard for their environment, they may find in time that their great land is no longer merely apathetic toward their residence there, but openly hostile.

Link – 

How Australia Became the Dirtiest Polluter in the Developed World

Posted in alo, ALPHA, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, solar power, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How Australia Became the Dirtiest Polluter in the Developed World

The Latest Court Case Didn’t End the NCAA As We Know It. The Next One Might.

by FlorianSmithers Posted on August 13, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Friday, a federal judge made college sports history when she ruled that the NCAA could not deny players from profiting from the use of their likenesses on TV or in video games. In doing so, Judge Claudia Wilken laid down two rules: (1) Schools can put up to $5,000 a year in a trust for athletes; and (2) they can offer more comprehensive scholarships that cover the full cost of attending college.

Many NCAA watchers have argued that the ruling in O’Bannon v. NCAA doesn’t change much, contrary to what some thought a year ago. For example, schools in the rich, successful power conferences already were moving to beef up scholarships. In the sense that the NCAA suffered a manageable setback, some have argued that it actually came out on top. But, they say, the NCAA might not be so lucky the next time around.

That’s because its upcoming legal battle could kill the governing body as we know it. Representing four former college athletes, big-time sports labor lawyer Jeffrey Kessler is targeting the NCAA and its five biggest conferences—the Atlantic Coast, the Big Ten, the Big 12, the Pacific 12, and the Southeastern—in an effort to dismantle the NCAA’s “amateur” system entirely. In a powerfully worded claim, he writes that the defendants “have lost their way far down the road of commercialism,” adding that their refusal to pay student-athletes is “illegal,” “pernicious,” and has brought “substantial damages…upon a host of college athletes whose services have yielded riches only for others.” The offering of scholarship money, he writes, is not nearly enough. “This class action is necessary to end the NCAA’s unlawful cartel, which is inconsistent with the most fundamental principles of antitrust law.”

The athletes represented in Jenkins v. NCAA—all onetime Division I basketball and football players—aren’t seeking damages, but rather an injunction that would make the status quo illegal, open up athlete compensation to market forces, and basically blow up the NCAA as currently constructed.

Michael McCann, director of the Sports and Entertainment Law Institute at the University of New Hampshire, finds that outcome unlikely. “My personal belief is that none of these cases are going to be a death blow to the NCAA,” he said over the phone. If anything, he says, the outcome of O’Bannon boosts the NCAA’s chances in the Jenkins case, especially since Wilken’s decision highlighted the limits of antitrust law and didn’t come out in favor of endorsement deals for high-profile players. “My instinct is that the NCAA probably feels better about winning the Jenkins case than it did before the O’Bannon decision.”

Still, Jenkins is by far the broadest and boldest challenge to the NCAA’s amateurism system yet, and Kessler’s involvement is an enormous boost to the cause. He’s a giant of sports law, having won the fight to secure free agency for NFL players in 1992, and his clients have included the players’ associations of the NFL and NBA, Tom Brady, and Michael Jordan. The NCAA, not to be outdone, has spent $240,000 on its congressional lobbying efforts this year, already shattering past spending records with months left to go in 2014.

Sports Illustrated‘s Andy Staples figures that the outcome of Jenkins, and the future of the NCAA, will come down to the “lifeline” Wilken tossed the NCAA: her opinion that paying college athletes more than a small amount (like $5,000 per year) could harm college sports. If the NCAA’s lawyers can make the case that fans would abandon college sports if athletes were paid pro-level salaries, the association will likely survive. If Kessler can persuade otherwise, then the NCAA as we know it could be history. “The ultimate winner,” Staples writes, “will be the one with best lawyers.”

McCann suggests, however, it may not even come to that. “This is the kind of case that could get settled,” he says. “Maybe it is resolved internally. Maybe the NCAA and conferences will get together and make some changes. The O’Bannon case took five years. This case was filed earlier this year…There may not be a resolution on this for a long time.”

Continue reading – 

The Latest Court Case Didn’t End the NCAA As We Know It. The Next One Might.

Posted in Anchor, Badger, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, The Atlantic, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Latest Court Case Didn’t End the NCAA As We Know It. The Next One Might.

Shorter Trees Could Make Peaches Cheaper

by Kandace86G Posted on August 8, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

When it comes to peach and nectarine trees, bigger isn’t necessarily better. An orchard worker can spend as much as half of his or her day lugging around the ladders required to reach the branches of a typical 13-foot tree. Plus, the danger of climbing the ladders drives up the cost of workers’ compensation insurance—growers of peaches and nectarines pay about 40 percent more for it than growers of low-lying fruit like grapes.

Now scientists at the University of California are trying to shrink the cost of labor on peach and nectarine farms by shrinking the plants themselves. In a 4-acre orchard south of Fresno, researchers are growing trees that they expect to max out at seven or eight feet. They say the shorter trees, which would not require a ladder to harvest or prune, could cut down on worker injuries and slash labor costs by more than 50 percent. If cultivated correctly, the mini-trees could be as fruitful as their taller counterparts.

If the experimental orchard works, it could have environmental perks too. In comments to UC Davis, one farmer estimated it costs him $1,400 an acre to thin his 250-acre peach and nectarine farm. Because of the high cost of ladders, many of his fellow growers are switching to almonds, he said. And almonds, as we’ve said before, are sucking California dry.

Original source:  

Shorter Trees Could Make Peaches Cheaper

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, organic, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Shorter Trees Could Make Peaches Cheaper

33 Years Ago: Reagan Goes Union-Busting, Fires 11,000 Striking Air Traffic Controllers

by CorrineFaulding Posted on August 5, 2014

Mother Jones

A group of uniformed men, who acknowledged they were military air traffic controllers, stand at the door which leads to the tower of Washington’s National Airport, as a guard rises to let them in. The Reagan administration claims its firings of striking air traffic controllers have broken the strike, partly due to the work of military controllers. Jeff Taylor/AP

Just days after members of the Professional Air Traffic Controls Organization (PATCO) went on strike, President Ronald Reagan declared the strike illegal under the Taft-Hartley act. Reagan ordered the 13,000 striking air traffic controllers to return to work within 48 hours. On August 5, 1981 Reagan fired over 11,000 workers who refused to return to work. PATCO, who supported Reagan in the 1980 election, was decertified as a union and the fired workers were banned from holding federal jobs ever again. It took the FAA close to ten years to return staffing to its normal level. Some former air traffic employees were eventually rehired. Military air traffic controllers also worked as replacements until new controllers could be trained. In 1993 Bill Clinton lifted the civil service ban on former strikers.

President Reagan with US Attorney General William French Smith making a statement to the press regarding the air traffic controllers strike from the Rose Garden. White House Photo/Ronald Reagan Library

Read original article – 

33 Years Ago: Reagan Goes Union-Busting, Fires 11,000 Striking Air Traffic Controllers

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 33 Years Ago: Reagan Goes Union-Busting, Fires 11,000 Striking Air Traffic Controllers

Rand Paul Flubs the Facts on the Minimum Wage

by Pasqual40F Posted on July 21, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says the minimum wage, like Trix, is for kids. Speaking in San Francisco over the weekend, the likely 2016 presidential candidate took issue with the president and first lady over an interview they gave to Parade, in which the Obamas suggested their daughters should work minimum wage jobs because “that’s what most folks go through every single day.” It was a fairly innocuous comment. But Paul argued it sent the wrong message. Per Politico:

Speaking at a downtown conference for libertarian and conservative technology types, the Kentucky Republican and prospective 2016 White House contender said he had an “opposite” view from the Obamas when it comes to seeing his own sons work delivering pizzas and at call centers.

“The minimum wage is a temporary” thing, Paul said. “It’s a chance to get started. I see my son come home with his tips. And he’s got cash in his hand and he’s proud of himself. I don’t want him to stop there. But he’s working and he’s understanding the value of work. We shouldn’t disparage that.”

Paul, a libertarian, was echoing the argument made by those who oppose raising the minimum wage: That those jobs are largely filled by young adults just entering the job market—people who are taking these low-paying positions before moving on to the better-paying jobs—so it’s no big deal if the compensation is at the bottom end of the scale. A low wage might even be beneficial, by providing an incentive to get to the next level. But this is not supported by the facts. Only a quarter of minimum wage workers are teenagers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly half of minimum wage earners are over 25, and 585,000 (18 percent) are over 45. These aren’t kids just learning the value of the buck; they’re adults who need income to support themselves and their families. As Mother Jones has reported previously, the current minimum wage doesn’t come close to doing that. Just take a spin on our living-wage calculator.

If Paul truly believes a low wage is “temporary” for most minimum-wage workers, perhaps he should take the Obamas’ advice for their daughters and spend some time working in a fast-food joint.

Read original article:  

Rand Paul Flubs the Facts on the Minimum Wage

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Rand Paul Flubs the Facts on the Minimum Wage

Presidential Appointments Were Already a Total Nightmare. Now They Just Got Worse.

by FrankieReeder Posted on June 26, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Barack Obama had better hope nobody resigns from his administration during the final two years of his presidency. Thanks to a new Supreme Court ruling released Thursday, it’s going to be a lot harder for Obama, and every other future president, to staff the executive branch.

In a unanimous decision penned by Justice Stephen Breyer, the court greatly reduced the president’s ability to make recess appointments with its decision in Noel Canning v. National Labor Relations Board. Breyer’s opinion rejected a lower court’s ruling that would have essentially nullified the president’s ability to appoint nominees to temporary jobs in the executive branch when Congress is out of town. But Breyer and his fellow eight justices said that the president can’t ignore Congress when it claims to still be at work, even if those sessions are just show meetings to obstruct the president. While upholding the concept of recess appointments, the new ruling will in essence prevent the president from using recess appointments anytime the opposition party controls one side of Congress. The Senate can’t enter a recess without the consent of the House, and they’re unlikely to ever get permission to officially leave town if the House majority is opposed to the president. The court’s decision also leaves countless labor dispute decisions in doubt.

Continue Reading »

Originally posted here: 

Presidential Appointments Were Already a Total Nightmare. Now They Just Got Worse.

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Presidential Appointments Were Already a Total Nightmare. Now They Just Got Worse.

China To Limit Carbon Emissions for First Time

by Myrna Posted on June 3, 2014

Absolute cap to come into effect, climate adviser says on the day after US announces ambitious carbon plan. Air pollution in Beijing. jhphoto/Imaginechina/AP China, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, will limit its total emissions for the first time by the end of this decade, according to a top government advisor. He Jiankun, chairman of China’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change, told a conference in Beijing on Tuesday that an absolute cap on carbon emissions will be introduced. “The government will use two ways to control CO2 emissions in the next five-year plan, by intensity and an absolute cap,” Reuters reported He as saying. Though not a government official, He is a high level advisor. However, Jiankun later in the day appear to row back on the comments. “What I said today was my personal view. The opinions expressed at the workshop were only meant for academic studies. What I said does not represent the Chinese government or any organisation,” he told Reuters. Read the rest at the Guardian. Originally posted here –  China To Limit Carbon Emissions for First Time ; ;Related ArticlesLive Coverage: Obama Takes His Boldest Step Ever To Fight Climate ChangeHere’s Why an Obama Plan to Regulate Carbon Could WorkDot Earth Blog: Rhetoric and Realities Around Obama’s ‘Carbon Pollution’ Power Plant Rules ;

More:

China To Limit Carbon Emissions for First Time

Posted in Citadel, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Monterey, ONA, OXO, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on China To Limit Carbon Emissions for First Time

9 Things You Need To Know About Obama’s New Climate Rules

by Myrna Posted on June 3, 2014

What the EPA’s new power plant regulations mean for you. tibu/Thinkstock The rules are finally out. In what some pundits are calling the most important act of President Obama’s second term, on Monday morning the EPA released its “Clean Power Plan.” These are the proposed rules that will require reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from existing electric power plants. Electric generation accounts for about 40 percent of current U.S. CO2 emissions. The text of the regulations runs to 645 pages, and it isn’t exactly a page-turner. We suspect you’ve got more fun things to do with your time on this lovely spring day than to read it. So here we answer the nine most important questions about the proposal for you: 1. What will the rules do? The EPA intends to create a “rate-based” limit on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants for each state depending on its current emissions. Rate-based means it sets a standard for how much CO2 is emitted per megawatt hour of electricity produced, not a limit on total carbon tonnage. The plan is designed, as was expected, to give states maximum flexibility to meet these goals in whichever way works best for them and to avoid constricting economic growth. States can, however, choose to convert their rate-based goal into a total tonnage goal if they prefer. 2. How much will the plan cut emissions? Nationwide, the plan is projected to reduce power plants’ CO2 emissions from 2005 levels by 26 or 27 percent by 2020 and about 30 percent by 2030. What’s strange about these numbers is that EPA is setting an ambitious target for 2020, and then barely improving it over the next decade. That’s pretty weak. As clean energy technology becomes cheaper, states should be able to do a lot more to reduce their emissions. The targets can be strengthened in the future, but don’t expect a President Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush to do so. When asked why the rate reductions are so front-loaded, an EPA senior official told reporters, “Some of the measures [to reduce emissions] can be implemented pretty rapidly.” Read the rest at Grist. Continue reading: 9 Things You Need To Know About Obama’s New Climate Rules Related ArticlesLive Coverage: Obama Takes His Boldest Step Ever To Fight Climate ChangeHere’s Why an Obama Plan to Regulate Carbon Could WorkDot Earth Blog: Rhetoric and Realities Around Obama’s ‘Carbon Pollution’ Power Plant Rules

Source – 

9 Things You Need To Know About Obama’s New Climate Rules

Posted in Citadel, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Monterey, ONA, OXO, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 9 Things You Need To Know About Obama’s New Climate Rules