Tag Archives: northwestern

Obama designates world’s largest protected area — it’s underwater

by DorisNewhouse Posted on August 26, 2016

Obama designates world’s largest protected area — it’s underwater

By on Aug 26, 2016Share

President Obama, who marked the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service by designating a whole new land monument in Maine, is giving oceans some love, too.

On Friday, he expanded the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument, also known as Papahānaumokuākea, to 582,578 square miles. At nearly three-and-a-half times the size of California, the monument is now the world’s largest protected area.

Papahānaumokuākea encompasses 10 islands and atolls of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and the Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge, which supports over 7,000 species — a quarter of which are unique to Hawaii.

Native Hawaiians urged for the monument’s expansion back in January and consider the place a “the boundary between Ao, the world of light and the living, and Pō, the world of the gods and spirits from which all life is born and to which ancestors return after death,” according to the White House.

Protecting this area means it will be closed for the extraction of oil, gas, minerals, and other energy development. You can learn more about it from this video by Pew:

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Obama designates world’s largest protected area — it’s underwater

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Obama drinks to his first Flint visit since lead poisoning crisis

by SilviaLamar6141 Posted on May 4, 2016

U.S. President Barack Obama drinks a glass of filtered water during a visit to Flint. REUTERS/Carlos Barria – RTX2CVDN

Obama drinks to his first Flint visit since lead poisoning crisis

By on May 4, 2016Share

President Obama’s first visit to Flint, Michigan since declaring a state of emergency was heavy on the optics from the start. Flanked by Flint residents and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, Obama worked to restore faith in a city that’s been totally betrayed by local, state, and federal levels of government over its water crisis.

The details of the trip appeared to be up in the air until the very last minute. Particularly the detail of whether Obama would drink the tap. The day before, staffers from Snyder’s office (who’s in the midst of a 30-day pledge to only drink Flint’s filtered tap water, in an effort to convince residents it’s safe) told the press he hoped Obama would drink from the tap while in town. Speaking from Air Force One this morning, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said it was “unclear” whether Obama would drink it.

In the end, the president tried the filtered water from the Flint public water system — twice.

“Generally, I haven’t been doing stunts, but here you go,” Obama said, taking a sip from a glass on a table after a meeting with federal officials at a food bank. “Filtered water is safe and it works.”

Later in the day, POTUS had a coughing fit during a speech at Northwestern High School and asked for another glass. This time it wasn’t a stunt. “I really did need a glass of water,” he insisted. “This is not a stunt.”

The trip was on the same day that the Michigan legislature appropriated an additional $128 million in aid for Flint, some of which will go towards replacing the city’s lead pipes — a process that could take another two years.

Flint residents aren’t letting local or state officials off the hook: One city and two state officials were recently hit with criminal charges. Governor Snyder — who says he can’t eat in a public restaurant these days without being heckled — was basically booed off the stage at Northwestern High School while introducing the President.

Speaking to a restless crowd of around 1,000 people at the high school, Obama did his damnedest to stay positive and constructive. He encouraged Flint residents to flush contaminants from their pipes by running the water in sinks in bathtubs, part of the “Flush for Flint” program — “not the most elegant title,” POTUS quipped, to some laughs. He also announced expanded Medicaid access for Flint residents though a state and federal collaboration, and strongly urged parents to get their kids checked.

But Obama also acknowledged the government’s failure to protect Flint. “This is a man-made crisis,” the President said.

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Obama drinks to his first Flint visit since lead poisoning crisis

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The Push to Unionize College Football Players Just Suffered a Huge Blow

by LinwoodJernigan Posted on August 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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The National Labor Relations Board on Monday dismissed a bid from Northwestern University football players to form the first-ever college athletes’ union, overturning an earlier regional board ruling and ending a year-and-a-half-long battle that included several union-busting efforts by the school and the team’s coaches to persuade athletes to vote against unionization.

From the Chicago Tribune:

In a unanimous decision, the five-member board declined to “assert” jurisdiction over the case because doing so would not promote uniformity and labor stability in college football and could potentially upset the competitive balance between college teams, according to an NLRB official.

The board, the official said, analyzed the nature, composition and structure of college football and concluded that Northwestern football players would be attempting to bargain with a single employer over policies that apply league-wide.

The decision marks a significant blow for Northwestern athletes, who won a regional board decision in March 2014 that determined they were university employees and could therefore seek union representation. However, it is unclear what effect the latest ruling will have on potential future unionization attempts at other schools; the board’s decision applies strictly to Northwestern’s case, and it declined to decide whether the athletes were employees under federal law, leaving open the possibility for athletes to unionize elsewhere.

The College Athletes Players Association, a collection of former athletes spearheading the bid, could appeal the ruling in federal court, but, according to the Tribune, that appears unlikely. Former Northwestern star quarterback Kain Colter, who had pushed the athletes’ union efforts, expressed disappointment over Monday’s ruling on Twitter, noting that the jury was still out as to whether college athletes are still employees.

CAPA president Ramogi Kuma called Monday’s ruling a “loss in time” in a statement, in that it delayed “the leverage the players need to protect themselves.” But, he said, it didn’t stop other athletes from pursuing unionization. “The fight for college athletes’ rights,” he told the Tribune, “will continue.”

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The Push to Unionize College Football Players Just Suffered a Huge Blow

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As UConn Celebrates, State Legislators Look to Help Players Unionize

by SheenaSwader Posted on April 8, 2014

Mother Jones

The University of Connecticut men’s basketball team may have beaten Kentucky in the national championship last night, but star guard Shabazz Napier immediately turned his attention to a bigger foe: the NCAA. Napier used his postgame interview to take the NCAA to task for banning the Huskies from postseason play last season due to poor academic standing. Two weeks ago, after calling the Northwestern unionization efforts “kind of great,” he said players sometimes don’t have enough money for food.

Connecticut legislators were listening. Some state lawmakers are exploring ways to make it easier for athletes at public schools to unionize, in response to the regional labor board ruling in favor of Northwestern football players as well as Napier’s comments. “When you look at the issues, they really look like employees,” Democratic state Rep. Pat Dillon said. “And employees have the right to unionize.”

The NCAA banned UConn from the 2013 postseason when the team’s academic progress rate—a measure of academic eligibility that predicts graduation rate—from 2007 to 2011 did not meet league standards. Dillon said it’s hypocritical for the NCAA and others to ban a team for academic reasons while defending the billion-dollar system that has players practicing and playing full-time. “You work them like horses and then you bad mouth them if their academics aren’t any good,” she said. “The team is punished if they try to make sure these kids get a good education. Of course, they’re punished if they don’t either.”

UConn responded to Napier’s comments about not having enough to eat with a statement saying that all scholarship athletes are “provided the maximum meal plan that is allowable under NCAA rules.” An athletic department spokesman said the university has no comment about potential unionization.

This wouldn’t be the first time Connecticut legislators took on NCAA athletics—the state passed a law in 2011 requiring schools to fully disclose all athletic scholarship terms, including expected out-of-pocket expenses for athletes, details about who’s responsible for medical expenses, and the renewal process for scholarships that only last one year. A step forward on unionization, though, might be harder to pass, Dillon said. “Starting to do the right thing can actually hurt you with the NCAA,” she said. “Lawmakers would be worried it would hurt UConn’s recruitment. They wouldn’t say it, but I’m sure they would.”

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As UConn Celebrates, State Legislators Look to Help Players Unionize

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Rutgers Athletic Director Wishes Critical Local Newspaper Would Die

by AdriannaMoncrie Posted on April 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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Rutgers University athletic director Julie Hermann told a journalism class that athletes at the school receive plenty of benefits and that it would be “great” if the Star-Ledger, the New Jersey newspaper that just laid off 167 staffers, would die completely, according to a report by Muckgers last week.

When a student in the class said the Star-Ledger might go under, Hermann responded, “That’d be great. I’m going to do all I can to not to give them a headline to keep them alive because I think I got them through the summer.” The paper dedicated a great deal of coverage to Hermann after she replaced former AD Tim Pernetti, who resigned last year when it was revealed he allowed men’s basketball coach Mike Rice to keep his job after being presented video evidence of Rice pelting his players with basketballs and shouting insults and gay slurs at them during practice. Hermann came with her own baggage—the women’s volleyball team she coached at the University of Tennessee 17 years ago wrote a letter to the athletic department accusing her of “mental cruelty,” including referring to athletes as “whores, alcoholics, and learning disabled.”

Hermann has denied treating her players that way, and in a statement from Rutgers to the Star-Ledger, said she was just speaking to the class “in an informal way and out of the glare of the media spotlight” and “had no knowledge of the impending reorganization of the Star-Ledger.” (Hermann’s talk, which came before the most recent layoffs were announced, was recorded by a student in attendance.)

The classroom conversation also touched on the college athlete unionization movement. “What of those 1,000 institutions that sponsor college sports—who can sustain the kids unionizing?” Hermann asked the class. “Who can do that? Most of them are barely making it as it is.” Hermann, it should be noted, has a base salary of $450,000. She went on to extol the benefits Rutgers athletes are already getting (especially now that that no one is throwing basketballs at them during practice, one assumes):

By the time we go recruit a football player, sign him, bring him to campus, do all of their care, provide all of their medicine, all of their travel, all of their gear, all the things we’ve got to provide—by the time we’re done with him, here at Rutgers, we’ve spent over half a million dollars on him minimum…so, technically, what we’re providing for them is a value, it’s about $100,000. How many of you are going to walk out of here and get jobs that pay you $100,000?

What’s amazing is that Hermann’s description of what Rutgers provides athletes is the exact legal argument that allowed Northwestern University football players the right to unionize. (Not to mention that one of players’ largest grievances is that universities don’t “do all of their care,” since many health effects from playing football don’t crop up until later in life.) And while many recent Rutgers grads may not be pulling in $100,000 salaries, their employers will be paying them in real money—not scholarships, shoulder pads, and concussion treatments.

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Rutgers Athletic Director Wishes Critical Local Newspaper Would Die

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