The cliff that America sidestepped with time to spare in 2012 was the one on the nation’s docks. On Friday, harbor operators and shippers reached an agreement with the union representing nearly 15,000 longshoremen on the East and Gulf coasts. The key point holding up the signing of a new contract was whether dockworkers would continue to receive royalties on the containers they hoisted on and off ships. With that issue resolved, apparently to the workers’ satisfaction, their union agreed to call off a year-end strike pending the resolution of less contentious points, and the nation was spared a work stoppage that would have slowed imports and exports to a relative trickle.
Had the workers walked, the attacks on them would be easy to imagine. Dockworkers are among this country’s best-paid blue-collar workers; many make more than $100,000 a year. They’re sitting ducks for union critics and are objects of wonderment for many Americans who can’t fathom how nonprofessional work can pay so much.
» Read more about: New Longshore Contract: Racing to the Top »
As a nation, we’ve already given countless billions of dollars in gifts to the one percent in the form of tax cuts, loopholes and corporate subsidies. If you think that’s not enough, here’s a list of more personal gifts you can buy for your favorite One Percenter.
In the 21st century, even the lowliest One Percenter can surround himself or herself with personal assistants, stylists and specialty chefs. For a truly unique experience, add a personal tanning butler to his or her entourage on a $3000/night booking at the Ritz Carlton. Even the dullest One Percenter will take a shining to this gift. The tanning butler will help apply sunbathing lotion and spritz you with Evian water while you sunbathe.
If your one percent friend is an expecting celeb,
» Read more about: Regifting for the Few Who Have Everything »
Most job seekers take care to scrub evidence of last night’s party from their social media profiles, but the employment consequences of more nuanced online interactions are still being determined. Just before the Christmas holiday, the National Labor Relations Board issued a decision ordering the reinstatement of five workers who were fired for responding to a co-worker’s criticism on Facebook. The decision goes some way to establish Facebook posts as protected under the National Labor Relations Act, and may discourage employers from basing personnel decisions on social media behavior in the future.
JD Supra reports on the case:
The case stemmed from a message that an employee of a nonprofit organization posted on Facebook outside of work hours. After Lydia Cruz-Moore told Marianna Cole-Rivera that she planned to discuss her concerns about employee performance with the Executive Director of Hispanics United of Buffalo,
» Read more about: NLRB Likes Facebook Defense of Fired Workers »
» Read more about: You Can’t Always Get What You Want: Post-Cliff Reactions »
The agreement passed last night is a breakthrough in beginning to restore tax fairness and achieves some key goals of working families. It does not cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits. It raises more than $700 billion over 10 years, including interest savings, by ending the Bush income tax cuts for families making more than $450,000 a year. And in recognition of the continuing jobs crisis, it extends unemployment benefits for a year. A strong message from voters and a relentless echo from grassroots activists over the last six weeks helped get us this far.
But lawmakers should have listened even better. The deal extends the Bush tax cuts for families earning between $250,000 and $450,000 a year and makes permanent Bush estate tax cuts exempting estates valued up to $5 million from any tax. These concessions amount to over $200 billion in additional tax cuts for the 2 percent.
We begin 2013 awaiting the House of Representatives vote on tax legislation passed by the Senate early this morning. So we’re technically off the fiscal cliff but not really about to hit the ground – yet. Below are some initial perceptions of what the legislation means, beginning with the conservative American Spectator.
» Read more about: Tax Deal: Over the Cliff or Tied to the Tracks? »
The careful Frying Pan News reader will note we make no claims that the following mots justes were 2012’s stupidest quotes. How could we, in a year exploding with extreme gaffery? How, in fact, could anyone even keep a reasonable tally? Enjoy – and Happy New Year!
1. “I would say to them, ‘Set me free.’ ” (Congresswoman Yvette Clarke, claiming Brooklyn’s African Americans were Dutch slaves in 1898.)
2. “The evidence is inarguable that Australia is becoming too expensive and too uncompetitive to do export-oriented business. Africans want to work, and its workers are willing to work for less than $2 per day. Such statistics make me worry for this country’s future.” (Gina Rinehart, the world’s richest woman, addressing the Sydney Mining Club.)
3. “We need a president accustomed to signing the front, not the back,
» Read more about: It's the Stupidity, Stupid: The Year in Quotes »
The New York Times should be embarrassed. On December 24 it gave a Christmas present to the corporate-backed lobby group Fix the Debt with its front-page Business section puff piece about the organization, which is pushing to balance the federal budget by slashing social programs while cutting taxes for the rich.
The 1149-word piece, “One Woman’s War on Debt Gains Steam,” by reporter Annie Lowrey, is a fawning profile of the group’s public face, Maya MacGuineas. The article makes it appear that the Fix the Debt group was hatched last year at a dinner party at Senator Mark Warner’s house, when in fact it is simply the latest incarnation of Pete Peterson, the billionaire Wall Street financier who over many years has invested tens of millions of his money in his long-term crusade to reduce the federal debt on the backs of the poor and middle class, including the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget,
» Read more about: Capitol Shill: N.Y. Times Swallows Fake Expert's Act »
The Wall Street Journal (in a pay-walled feature) reported online last night that Walmart will begin to monitor conditions at warehouses operated by subcontractors.
The policy change represents a concession to employees at those facilities, who have claimed they are subjected to harsh and unsafe working conditions, along with unfair labor and wage practices. Locally, warehouses in the Inland Empire have been the target of strikes and other protests by workers.
WSJ reporter Shelly Banjo wrote:
“[T]he Bentonville, Ark., giant is developing an auditing system, similar to the one it uses to monitor overseas factories in places such as China and Bangladesh, to help ensure that the domestic parts of its supply chain are complying with safety and labor rules . . . State labor officials and activists called Walmart’s plan to monitor warehouses insufficient, saying that a fire at a Bangladesh garment factory that killed 112 workers last month underscored the shortcomings of such auditing systems.”
Although the warehouse workers are not currently represented by unions,
» Read more about: Walmart to Police Its Subcontracted Warehouses »