Tag Archives: puzder

The Dead Pool – 15 February 2017

by RoseS35zsysbowu Posted on February 15, 2017

Mother Jones

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Apparently Andrew Puzder has withdrawn his nomination to be Secretary of Labor. “He’s very tired of the abuse,” a friend said. This was awkward wording, since the withdrawal came after Oprah Winfrey handed over tape of Puzder’s ex-wife on Oprah in 1990 claiming that he had abused her. Also after revelations that he had hired an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper and failed to submit payroll taxes for her. And after an increasing number of Republicans said they were “on the fence” and basically told President Trump his nomination was dead. Also after the Breitbart wing of the party kept up a steady campaign of complaints that Puzder was too damn soft on immigration.

The upshot is that Trump will now nominate someone who’s probably just as anti-labor as Puzder, but also a fire-breathing wall supporter. Hooray.

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The Dead Pool – 15 February 2017

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Trump’s Pick for Labor Secretary Doesn’t Think Workers Should Get Breaks

by LynIrvin725 Posted on December 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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The US Department of Labor exists to “foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners and job seekers,” and to “improve working conditions” and “assure work-related benefits and rights.” Andrew Puzder, Donald Trump’s choice to lead the department, has not exactly embodied those values in his career as CEO of CKE Restaurants, parent company of fast-food chains Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. He’s a staunch and vocal opponent of minimum-wage hikes, and his company has had to pay out millions of dollars to settle overtime claims (more here).

And now, thanks to OC Weekly‘s Gabriel San Roman, we know what Puzder thinks of worker breaks. Spoiler: not much.

San Roman got to digging into the archives of Cal State Fullerton’s Center for Oral and Public History, where he found a 2009 interview (not available online) with Puzder. According to San Roman, Puzder “complained about regulations and overtime laws, claiming workers are overprotected.” San Roman adds, quoting from the interview:

“Have you ever been to a fast food restaurant and the employees are sitting and you’re wondering, ‘Why are they sitting?'” Puzder asked. “They are on what is called a mandatory break emphasis his.” He shared a laugh with the interviewer, saying the so-called nanny state is why Carl’s Jr. doesn’t open up any new restaurants in California anymore.

Now, anointing a burger tycoon who openly disdains worker rights as labor secretary might seem like a quintessentially Trumpian move. But it’s worth remembering that Puzder is very much an establishment Republican. A major donor to GOP political campaigns, he served as an economic adviser and spokesman for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, and as a delegate to the 2012 Republican National Convention and as chairman of the Platform Committee’s Sub-Committee on the Economy, Job Creation, and the Debt.

In late 2014, as the 2016 presidential race was about to heat up, Puzder listed his top three choices for the Republican nomination: Romney, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (now Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Energy), and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. That same year, Puzder and then-Gov.Perry even appeared together at a Carl’s Jr. event in Austin, to roll out the burger chain’s “Texas BBQ Thickburger” and raise funds for a veterans’ charity, along with Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Hannah Ferguson. Puzder declared Perry “America’s best governor.”

And now they’ll both be in the Cabinet. Trump ran hard against the GOP establishment, only to hand it the keys to power.

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Trump’s Pick for Labor Secretary Doesn’t Think Workers Should Get Breaks

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Let’s Cool It On the “Fake News” Irony

by Warner89Dov Posted on December 10, 2016

Mother Jones

Over at National Review, James Sherk has a complaint:

President-elect Trump has picked Andy Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants (i.e. Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s) for labor secretary. Amusingly, the media coverage of his nomination has been dominated by . . . fake news. Several outlets have reported that Puzder opposes increasing the minimum wage. That’s not exactly true.

Forget the Puzder stuff. His view on the minimum wage is a little hard to pin down. My objection is to the overuse of “fake news.” There are two things that can qualify:

Stuff that’s literally made up and passed off as real. The most famous example is here.

Wild conspiracy theories passed around on Facebook pages and crank websites.

“Fake news” is a useful concept, but not if we start using it to refer to anything we think is wrong or biased or not fully reported. We already have good words for this kind of stuff, ranging from “not the whole story” to “outright lie.” We don’t need to ruin a perfectly good phrase by using it where it really doesn’t fit.

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Let’s Cool It On the “Fake News” Irony

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Trump’s Labor Secretary Pick Tried to Overturn Roe v. Wade. He Almost Succeeded.

by LachlanLemmons0 Posted on December 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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President-elect Trump is expected to name Andrew Puzder, chief executive of the company that runs fast food giants Carl’s Jr. and Hardees, to head the Department of Labor. This choice has already sparked concern among labor advocates, given Puzder’s frequent commentaries opposing minimum wage increases.

But reproductive rights advocates should also be concerned. Puzder has long opposed abortion rights and even wrote the Missouri abortion law the Supreme Court upheld in its 1989 Webster v. Reproductive Health Services decision. This was a seminal case that allowed states to impose far more restrictions on abortion care than had previously been permitted under Roe v. Wade, including limits on the use of public funds and facilities for abortion care.

Donald Trump has promised to appoint anti-abortion Supreme Court justices, and his vice president-elect Mike Pence has said he wants to “send Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history.” Back in the ’80s, when he was a lawyer working in St. Louis, Puzder acted on similar convictions. In a 1984 article in the Stetson Law Journal, Puzder and another lawyer proposed that the Missouri legislature pass a law defining life as beginning at conception in broader contexts—in property or contract law, for instance. Puzder saw its purpose as mounting a challenge against Roe, which had legalized abortion a little less than a decade earlier. If the court recognized that a fetus had rights in contexts other than abortion, he reasoned, it created a foundation for challenging legal abortion down the line.

“This is not an abortion statute,” Puzder told the Chicago Tribune in 1989, three months before Webster was heard by the Supreme Court. “It is designed to make the Supreme Court face the question of deciding whether a state can decide when life exists.”

Puzder worked with Sam Lee, a local anti-abortion lobbyist, to move the proposal to the legislature. The two got acquainted because Puzder had often helped get Lee out of jail following his arrests during sit-ins at abortion clinics “by arguing a defense of necessity,” noted the Tribune. “Lee had to break the law and trespass because he believed that life began at conception and that the only way to stop the greater crime was to limit access to the clinic. The defense almost always worked.”

The two added a slew of other abortion restrictions to the bill—including one prohibiting the use of public resources to provide or counsel on abortions—and soon it was signed into law in Missouri. The measure was challenged by a local abortion clinic, Reproductive Health Services, and provisions of the law were subsequently found unconstitutional by several appeals courts. Ultimately, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court found that none of the bill’s provisions were unconstitutional, dealing a blow to abortion rights advocates—but the high court clarified their ruling should not be taken as a referendum on the original decision in Roe v. Wade. Puzder now will likely join an administration that plans to complete a mission he began thirty years ago.

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Trump’s Labor Secretary Pick Tried to Overturn Roe v. Wade. He Almost Succeeded.

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