Category Archives: Political
It should be a crime
Conservative Republicans in our nation’s capital have managed to accomplish something they only dreamed of when Tea Partiers streamed into Congress at the start of 2011: They’ve basically shut Congress down. Their refusal to compromise is working just as they hoped: No jobs agenda. No budget. No grand bargain on the deficit. No background checks on guns. Nothing on climate change. No tax reform. No hike in the minimum wage. Nothing so far on immigration reform. It’s as if an entire branch of the federal government — the branch that’s supposed to deal directly with the nation’s problems, not just execute the law or interpret the law but make the law — has gone out of business, leaving behind only a so-called “sequester” that’s cutting deeper and deeper into education, infrastructure, programs for the nation’s poor, and national defense.
Robert Reich: The Quiet Closing of Washington
Why Didn’t I Think of That
If God wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates. ~Jay Leno~ The problem with political jokes is they get elected. ~Henry Cate, VII~ We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office ~Aesop~ Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. ~Nikita Khrushchev~ When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I’m beginning to believe it. ~Clarence Darrow~ Why pay money to have your family tree traced; go into politics and your opponents will do it for you. ~Author unknown Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel. ~John Quinton Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other. ~Oscar Ameringer I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truthabout them. ~Adlai Stevenson, campaign speech, 1952 A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country. ~ Tex Guinan~ I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians. ~Charles de Gaulle Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks. ~Doug Larson There ought to be one day — just one — when there is open season on senators. ~Will Rogers
IRS Scandal Explained
Go Teamsters
Mon Apr 22, 2013 at 07:09 AM PDT O’Brien said the Teamsters mobilized their members and other unions through Twitter and Facebook yesterday. He added that about 350 Teamsters are expected this morning, “and we can get 1,000 if we need them.”
Teamsters form human wall against planned Westboro Baptist picket at bombing victim’s funeral
The attention-seeking scum of Westboro Baptist Church, true to form, threatened that they’d be picketing at the funeral of Boston Marathon bombing victim Krystle Campbell this morning. In response, Teamsters from Boston’s Local 25 laid plans to form a human shield. By 8 AM, the Boston Globe reports, 200 Teamsters had gathered at the funeral site.
attribution: Teamster Nation
Good luck being seen through this wall of Teamsters, Westboro Baptist assholes.
“It’s the right thing to do,” [local president Sean] O’Brien said of the decision to protect the funeral. “The family deserves a peaceful grieving process that’s free from any coward-led group.”
The Teamsters lined the road leading to the church. According to O’Brien, residents of Medford, where the funeral is being held, reached out to the Teamsters; Local 25 is a long-time, major force in the Boston area. Krystle Campbell’s mother and brother are members of UNITE HERE Local 26, intensifying the local union community’s sense of solidarity and support for all the victims of the bombing. Not that they’d welcome Westboro Baptist to any of the funerals.
CEOs Earn 354 Times More Than Average Worker
Chief executives of the nation’s largest companies earned an average of $12.3 million in total pay last year — 354 times more than a typical American worker, according to the AFL-CIO.
The average worker made $34,645 last year, according to the group that represents over 50 trade unions.
Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison’s $96.1 million pay package topped the list, followed by $54.3 million earned by Credit Acceptance Corp.’s (CACC) Brett Roberts and Discovery Communications (DISCA) CEO David Zaslav’s $50 million, according to the union’s pay project.
The one stand out was Apple (AAPL) CEO Timothy Cook, whose pay dropped to $4.2 million from $376 million in 2011, when his compensation package got a boost from long-term stock awards.
The dip in Cook’s pay was enough to lower the overall average for CEOs of top companies by 5% from 2011.
The discrepancy in pay between CEOs and the average worker has skyrocketed over the years, peaking in 2000, when the gap was 525 times. In 1980, CEO pay was 42 times that of the average worker.
The AFL-CIO each year highlights the pay disparity between workers and chief executives from companies that are part of Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index.
Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO president, said he hopes the project will remind Washington leaders that most workers “continue to struggle.”
“They struggle every day to make ends meet, their wages are stagnant, their companies are trying to take away their health care and pensions, and they’re angry,” Trumka said. “And very few them know what’s happening with CEO (pay).”
The union wants regulators to enforce an outstanding rule from Wall Street reforms for publicly traded companies to reveal CEO pay compared to their average employees. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has delayed efforts to craft that rule, in part because of heavy lobbying by companies.
The labor group unveiled an updated website database on Monday compiled from 327 companies based on SEC filings. The site will post CEO pay for all 500 companies as the data is made public.
Trumka himself makes $302,000 in total compensation, according to federal records, or 8.7 times the average worker.
Tita Freeman, spokeswoman for CEO lobbying group The Business Roundtable, would not comment on the pay gap. She said CEOs represented by her group support efforts to tie executive pay to performance.
