Saturday, November 30, 2013

Senators blast Wal-Mart “trampling” workers’ rights as dozens of activists are arrested on Black Friday

Senators blast Wal-Mart “trampling” workers’ rights as dozens of activists are arrested on Black Friday

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At least 55 total people have been arrested in Black Friday Wal-Mart protests, according to organizers. Those arrests, which came amid a statement of support from a handful of congressional Democrats and plans for 1,500 total protests, took place at civil disobedience actions in Ontario, California; Arlington, Virginia; Chicago; Dallas; and Secaucus, New Jersey. Arrests were also expected at mid-day demonstrations in St. Paul, Sacramento, and Seattle, and at a Bay Area rally at 3 PM PST.

“I have to look at my ancestors, and those who joined in civil rights marches, walks, sit-ins, and they did civil disobediences for us,” Chicago employee Myron Byrd told Salon prior to being arrested. He said his reaction when watching arrests at a prior protest was “Wow, this reminds me of the sit-in days – you know, when my mom and them used to talk about in the sixties.” Byrd added that the action was “for the workers who may stand, and most of them [who] cannot stand. I’m sacrificing myself along with others to do this to show Wal-Mart that hey, I’m not afraid, they not afraid, we not afraid.”

Protesters at Ferguson Walmart want better pay for store's workers : Business

Protesters at Ferguson Walmart want better pay for store's workers : Business

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Tuesday, November 26, 2013

5 ways electric cars could be safer than gasoline powered ones

5 ways electric cars could be safer than gasoline powered ones
 
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But there are reasons to think that lithium ion battery vehicles could be even safer than gasoline ones.
Gasoline is concentrated in a single large tank. The flammable liquid electrolyte that burns in battery fires is contained in small packages. That provides more opportunities for protecting the electrolyte and slowing the spread of a fire if one of them has a problem. The recent fires in the Tesla Model S were contained in the front part of the car.

You don’t have to refuel batteries, so there’s no pumping of flammable liquids.

Electric cars have far fewer moving parts than gasoline ones, so there will be fewer things to break down. A large share of the  fires in conventional cars are the result of the failure of mechanical parts.
During normal operation, you don’t set fire to the electrolytes in batteries. But gasoline engines operate by deliberately exposing gasoline to a spark. The engines run hot. It’s a tricky mix to manage.

China Tests it's First Unmanned Stealth Drone!

Monday, November 25, 2013

“They are trying to destroy my life”: Chevron’s legal war on its harshest critic

“They are trying to destroy my life”: Chevron’s legal war on its harshest critic

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Gowen and Keker, of course, are clearly on Donziger’s side; you’d expect them to blast Chevron. But some independent observers also have expressed concern about Chevron’s legal tactics. Most worrisome is Chevron’s use of RICO — the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — against Dongizer. RICO is used most commonly to prosecute mafia figures. Some lawyers and legal scholars say that employing RICO against a plaintiff attorney could set a dangerous precedent.

Susan Bozorgi, a Miami-based criminal defense lawyer, told Newsweek that she worries about what it will mean if Chevron wins: “[RICO] was meant to be used against the mob. The danger about a case like this is that it could send a message to a lawyer who wants to take up a cause for an underdog that Big Brother, the big corporate entity, is going to start coming after you for criminal conduct.”

UC-Hastings law professor Roht-Arriaza said to me: “I’m not a RICO expert, but I don’t know of any case that involves the behavior of companies abroad, where the company has turned around and sued under RICO. Chevron has been sued before, but they haven’t done this, even when it looked like things weren’t going well for them.” She continued: “It’s interesting the number of levels on which Chevron is fighting back. They are not only doing this, they are also bringing all of these arbitration cases, basically trying to say that the Ecuadorian court shouldn’t have brought any judgment.”

Poll: Most Americans don’t know what the frack fracking is

Poll: Most Americans don’t know what the frack fracking is

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Fracking: Is it the key to U.S. energy independence; an environmental plague contaminating groundwater, polluting the air and even causing earthquakes; or just a funny word?
Most Americans don’t have an opinion, according to a study by researchers from Oregon State, George Mason and Yale. And the majority of those questioned — 58 percent — said they know “nothing at all” about fracking.

The data’s derived from a 2012 survey, which sampled over 1,000 Americans to gauge public understanding of issues surrounding climate change. Only 9 percent of respondents said they’d heard “a lot” about fracking, 7 percent said they’d heard of some of the potential environmental impacts and 3 percent were aware of the positive economic and energy supply impacts.

Another 58 percent majority of respondents had no opinion of their stance on the controversy surrounding fracking. Those who did were pretty evenly split, with 22 percent in favor and 20 percent opposed. The older people got, the more likely they were to support the process, as were people with higher levels of education. People who were more informed about fracking itself, however, were more likely to be against it, as were women and people with “more egalitarian worldviews.” Reading newspapers was associated with opposition to fracking, while watching TV news was associated with support.

Friday, November 22, 2013

The Wall Street Code (Marije Meerman, VPRO)

The Big Fix - BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Cover up

Starbucks union-buster is ironic winner after liberals push nuclear option

Starbucks union-buster is ironic winner after liberals push nuclear option

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snip


When Senate Democrats curbed filibusters in a historic Thursday vote, unions were among the major winners. The D.C. Circuit Court, where Republican obstruction has maintained a conservative majority, has repeatedly rejected modest pro-labor moves by the National Labor Relations Board. And restricting filibusters on nominations could pave the way for future senators to rein in filibusters on legislation, which have bedeviled unions’ labor law reform efforts every time that Democrats controlled both Congress and the presidency. Unions have thus been at the forefront of recent efforts to secure filibuster reforms.

So it’s ironic that one of the most acute and immediate beneficiaries of those efforts will be Patricia Ann Millett, a woman who helped Starbucks stymie unions. Millett is one of three D.C. Circuit nominees tapped by President Obama and blocked by Republicans; after invoking the so-called nuclear option, the Senate voted 55-43 Thursday to move forward on Millett.

“I find it troubling, because Ms. Millett and her firm Akin Gump went well beyond what I consider the bounds of decency and morality in the very aggressive anti-union campaign they really designed and helped Starbucks carry out,” Daniel Gross, a founding member of the Starbucks Workers Union, told Salon. “The campaign that Ms. Millett and her firm architected and really co-led, and continues to co-lead with Starbucks, involved all of the scorched earth tactics which are starting to come to light more and more.” The White House, the AFL-CIO and Starbucks did not provide comment on Millett’s Starbucks work in response to Thursday inquiries. Akin Gump declined to comment.

WALMART'S FOOD DRIVE - Tell Walmart: Decent Pay, Not Hand Outs

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

1983 Reform: Social Security Benefits Were Cut by 19 Percent

1983 Reform: Social Security Benefits Were Cut by 19 Percent

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note:  looks like history going to repeat



  • First, the 1983 reforms didn’t only reduce benefits; they also increased taxes, by covering newly hired federal workers and non-profit associations, accelerating tax increases already on the books, prohibiting state/local workers from leaving the system, and so on.

  • Second, while benefits in any given month will be lower in the future than they would have been under 1983 rules, that doesn’t mean they’d be lower in real terms.

  • Third, future retirees will live longer than those in the past did, so while they may receive somewhat lower replacement rates than in the past, they’ll collect them over longer retirements.

  • - See more at: http://healthblog.ncpa.org/1983-reform-social-security-benefits-were-cut-by-19-percent/#sthash.V1wEfI5W.dpuf



  • First, the 1983 reforms didn’t only reduce benefits; they also increased taxes, by covering newly hired federal workers and non-profit associations, accelerating tax increases already on the books, prohibiting state/local workers from leaving the system, and so on.

  • Second, while benefits in any given month will be lower in the future than they would have been under 1983 rules, that doesn’t mean they’d be lower in real terms.

  • Third, future retirees will live longer than those in the past did, so while they may receive somewhat lower replacement rates than in the past, they’ll collect them over longer retirements.

  • - See more at: http://healthblog.ncpa.org/1983-reform-social-security-benefits-were-cut-by-19-percent/#sthash.V1wEfI5W.dpuf

    Elizabeth Warren: EXPAND Social Security benefits

    If I Were Obama - Cenk Reacts To Obamacare Trouble

    Corruption On Steroids - Koch Brothers Spend Record Cash

    Friday, November 15, 2013

    What Secret Message Is Hiding In The Wendy's Logo?

    Car Runs For 100 Years Without Refueling - The Thorium Car

    Obamacare Website Model Was Bullied

    Sorry, Tea Party: Most red-state Americans believe global warming is real

    Sorry, Tea Party: Most red-state Americans believe global warming is real

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    A vocal minority of climate deniers are giving politicians the wrong impression of what their constituents think about climate change, a new study found. Despite the common perception that opinions vary across different parts of the country, survey data analyzed by Jon Krosnick at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment establishes that the vast majority of Americans are in agreement with the scientific consensus on global warming.

    When asked, “What is your personal opinion? Do you think that the world’s temperature probably has been going up over the past 100 years, or do you think this probably has not been happening?” the vast majority of Americans confirmed that, yes, it’s been getting hotter (as shown in the above map).

    According to Krosnick, legislatures in Washington often base their impressions of what their constituents are thinking on emails, phone calls and conversations with individual people, while few conduct polling about climate-related issues. Looking at data collected from almost 20,000 people between 2006 and 2013, he found that those individuals don’t accurately represent public opinion in even the reddest of red states. He presented his findings yesterday morning to the congressional Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change in Washington, D.C.

    The majority of respondents in every state surveyed also said they believe that global warming was caused by humans, agreeing with 97 percent of scientists:

    Friday, November 8, 2013

    Exxon “disappointed” with $2.7 million fine for Arkansas pipeline spill

    Exxon “disappointed” with $2.7 million fine for Arkansas pipeline spill

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    A report commissioned by Exxon identified the root cause of the failure as hook-shaped cracks along the seams of the pipe, which was manufactured in the 1940s. Those cracks come from an outdated welding process not used since the 1970s, but they can still be found on thousands of miles of pipelines across the U.S.

    In a notice released Wednesday, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said Exxon should have known the pipe would be susceptible to seam failure because the company detected problems in 1991, 2005 and 2006.

    Exxon didn’t retest the pipeline often enough and didn’t focus on sections that run near homes and drinking-water sources, the agency said, adding that the company didn’t act quickly enough on anomalies in the pipe found in 2010

    .
    An Exxon spokesman said it was disappointed with the fine, calling PHMSA’s analysis flawed.


    Monday, November 4, 2013

    Paul Krugman: Germany harming global economic recovery

    Paul Krugman: Germany harming global economic recovery

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    GOP’s humiliating new predicament: Why it may have to fund the law it hates!

    GOP’s humiliating new predicament: Why it may have to fund the law it hates!

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    snip


    Republicans know that as time goes on, the constituency of new Affordable Care Act beneficiaries will grow, and eventually cross a point of no return past which “repeal,” in the sense that they’ve been promising conservatives they will “repeal Obamacare,” will become impossible. After all, Republicans are in the midst of proving how politically dangerous it is to pass laws that result in people losing their health insurance.
    They understand the attraction of government benefits as well as anyone, which explains why they’re attacking the law so aggressively in the early days of its enrollment period, before coverage kicks in on Jan. 1, and while its botched rollout is preventing hundreds of thousands of people from completing applications for insurance.

    If the Obama administration manages to fix Healthcare.gov pretty quickly, then the story will change after the new year and Republicans will have to undertake an awkward political reversal.

    At the same time, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that in most of the country, the Affordable Care Act rollout has been a fiasco. It’s probably the case, actually, that even if the errors get corrected quickly, the salient facts about the past month and the coming weeks — the failure of the federally facilitated exchanges, the millions of cancellation notices — will loom large over the program, particularly on the right, well into next year.

    Obamacare: National Website Disaster!


    Memo to SEC: Make corporations disclose political contributions!

    Memo to SEC: Make corporations disclose political contributions!

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    According to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who delivered the opinion for the Court, “With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters. Shareholders can determine whether their corporation’s political speech advances the corporation’s interest in making profits, and citizens can see whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.”

    The problem with this particular assumption, which economists call perfect information, is that corporations are, surprise surprise, not legally obligated to share information on political spending with their shareholders or the public. In August 2011, a group of high-profile law professors filed a petition with the Securities and Exchange Commission, calling on the agency to require public companies to disclose what corporate resources they spend on political activities because “most political spending remains opaque to investors in most publicly traded companies.”

    Why do companies spend money on politics? The answer seems obvious: they want to generate profits. They are seeking advantages like reduced trade barriers, government contracts, easier regulatory inspections, and lower tax rates. For more on this point, see my colleague Tom Ferguson’s recent paper with Paul Jorgensen and Jie Chen, which reveals how “Too Big to Fail” Wall Street firms and telecom companies have captured the GOP and the Democrats, respectively. (As an aside, isn’t it odd that the same companies orchestrating the expansion of the surveillance state are so concerned about their own privacy?)

    Maggie Fox - The Price of Carbon Pollution


    Saturday, November 2, 2013