In the Food Network’s popular show, Restaurant Impossible, star Robert Irvine visits a failing restaurant that is poorly managed, has depressing décor, and which serves inedible food. He and his staff completely transform the business, and by show’s end there are hugs and smiles all around. Many of the restaurants Irvine visits are completely unsanitary. In a recent episode, Irvine told the owners that their place had “over 500 health code violations.” He said the kitchen was so disgusting that he would not even try the food, and told diners that they were eating at their own risk.
But neither Irvine nor the Food Network reported the establishment to the local health department. Nor did they ask how such a “disgusting” kitchen could have gone uninspected by city officials, or raise alarms as to the likelihood there were many other restaurants in the city also endangering their customers’ health.
» Read more about: Why ‘Restaurant Impossible’ Blows the Wrong Whistle »
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is now fully staffed and able to continue to function to protect workers’ rights after the U.S. Senate today confirmed five members. The votes end a months-long blockade on President Obama’s nominees by Senate Republicans who threatened to shut the board down Aug. 27.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the confirmations are:
Good news for all workers seeking to exercise the rights they are guaranteed by law. Those essential rights include the ability to bargain together for fair wages and living standards and a workplace safe from abuse, harassment and intimidation.
The five members are current NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce; Nancy Schiffer, a former AFL-CIO associate general counsel; and NLRB attorney Kent Hirozawa, currently the chief counsel to Pearce; and attorneys Philip Miscimarra and Harry Johnson, who represent management in labor-management relations.
Earlier this month, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was set to change Senate rules that would have eliminated filibusters against certain executive branch nominees,
» Read more about: Finally: National Labor Relations Board at Full Strength »
Last November unions won a resounding victory when voters defeated Proposition 32, a ballot measure that would have crippled labor’s political influence in California, partly by barring public-employee unions from using payroll-deducted funds for political purposes. The initiative, which enjoyed a huge lead in early opinion polls, was heavily funded by wealthy conservatives and far-right groups.
Union leaders were overjoyed by its defeat.
“You can’t buy California,” Dean Vogel, president of the California Teachers Association (CTA), told an election-night victory party in Sacramento. “We’re not for sale.”
The celebration hasn’t been long lived. In a little-noticed move in April, a conservative legal organization that has pushed to overturn the 1964 Voting Rights Act filed a lawsuit in federal court in Santa Ana that could accomplish in the courts what Prop. 32 couldn’t at the ballot box. The players behind the suit may not be household names but the millionaires and private foundations covering their legal fees represent a familiar klatch of extreme libertarians who,
» Read more about: Prop. 32 Ghost Looms Over Lawsuit Against Teachers Union »
DealBook recently published a piece by Kent Rowey that makes a troubling argument for selling public services and infrastructure to Wall Street banks and other corporations. Under the guise of making recommendations for Detroit, Mr. Rowey tried to sell the idea that auctioning off our most vital services and assets to for-profit companies is a simple win-win solution for strapped governments.
It sounds simple, but the real track record of public-private partnerships is fraught with problems.
Mr. Rowey holds up the example of Chicago’s 36,000 parking meters that were sold in a 75-year lease to an investor group backed by Morgan Stanley as a success. In fact, Chicago taxpayers, investors and mayors across the country will tell you that not only was it an unmitigated disaster, it is also Exhibit A in the folly of blindly giving up taxpayer control of services.
An after-the-fact investigation by the city’s inspector general concluded that the decision to enter the lease contract lacked “meaningful public review” and neglected the city’s long-term interests to solve a short-term budget crisis.
» Read more about: Privatization of Public Resources Can Be Highway Robbery »
Two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions involving especially high profile cases have garnered all the legal headlines. The Court’s watershed decision rejecting Proposition 8 and restoring the legality of same-sex marriage in California gave new rights to a significant portion of American citizens – and gave blue states something to shout about.
Days before, red states held their own party after a court majority ruled that the 1965 Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional because it relied on data from the 1970s that was supposedly outdated. Immediately, officials in North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama – all states covered by the law – got to work adopting restrictions limiting the vote of the old, the poor and people of color.
Just before these two momentous decisions, however, when no one was paying attention, the high court gave the country to the corporations — again. The Supremes handed down a decision that curtailed the avenues that employees have used to redress instances of religious or racial discrimination.
Before January 2009, the filibuster was used only for measures and nominations on which the minority party in the Senate had their strongest objections. Since then, Senate Republicans have filibustered almost everything, betting that voters will blame Democrats for the dysfunction in Congress as much as they blame the GOP.
So far the bet is paying off because the press has failed to call out the GOP – which is now preventing votes on the President’s choices for three D.C. Circuit Court nominees, the Labor Department and the EPA, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, and the National Labor Relations Board. (The GOP has blocked all labor board nominees, some to whom the President gave recess appointments, but he’s now asking approval for all.)
The GOP has already violated hundreds of years of Senate precedent by filibustering the nomination of a Cabinet secretary, Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense, and using the filibuster to delay John Brennan’s nomination as CIA Director.
» Read more about: Clinton Official: New GOP Hates Government and Governing »
In my post last week, after the announcement that the employer mandate would not be enforced for a year, I wrote that it was vital that the Obama administration show as much concern for the workers who might be denied health insurance as it did for employers. Specifically, I asked the administration to make clear that a worker would be able to get subsidized health coverage through the new exchanges based on filling out an application, without having to get proof from an employer. On Friday [July 5, the Department of Health and Human Services] issued that ruling.
The decision not to enforce the employer mandate for a year is certain to cost some people health coverage as some employers decide to postpone complying with the law. Their workers, possibly also confused by the delay, may not apply for subsidized coverage. But if they do apply, the new ruling will be a big help to them.
» Read more about: How Obamacare Mandate Delay Helps Workers »
You get the basics in high school. The federal government is divided into three branches (executive, legislative, judicial). Locally you’ve got the mayor and the city council. Etc. Most of us don’t graduate with enough knowledge so that as adults we truly grasp how even the most well-known governmental power structures really work (what percentage of Americans can actually explain the Electoral College?), let alone more obscure power centers.
The Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community is aiming to redress this lack of knowledge through a series of Power Analysis Workshops (or PAWs), which the coalition says are intended “to build collective knowledge of the power of local government [, …] of where branches of government get their power, how they impact the community and how residents can ensure local government works for all residents.”
“It’s important that all residents are engaged in the political process and understand how the decisions their representatives make impact their daily lives,” says Christine Petit,
» Read more about: Teaching the ABCs of Power in Long Beach »
A basic economic principle is government ought to tax what we want to discourage, and not tax what we want to encourage.
For example, if we want less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we should tax carbon polluters. On the other hand, if we want more students from lower-income families to be able to afford college, we shouldn’t put a tax on student loans.
Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, congressional Republicans are intent on doing exactly the opposite.
Earlier this year the Republican-led House passed a bill pegging student-loan interest rates to the yield on the 10-year Treasury note, plus 2.5 percentage points. “I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that,” Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the co-sponsor of the GOP bill, said.
Republicans estimate this will bring in around $3.7 billion of extra revenue,
» Read more about: Conservatives: Tax Students, Not Polluters »
The trucking industry likes to say, “If you have it, a truck brought it.” The industry’s point is that trucking is an essential and ubiquitous part of our economy.
This is true, so far as it goes. But trucks don’t drive themselves. And so at a recent meeting of the Carson City Council, a slightly different message was on display: If you want a good job, you’re no longer likely to find it in port trucking – at least not without a fight.
Carson, located 10 minutes north of Los Angeles’ harbor, is a major hub of port trucking: Fifty-two port trucking companies operate there — more than in any other Southern California city except L.A. and Long Beach; hundreds of truck drivers call Carson home and more than 1,000 port trucks are parked in town. The conditions of the industry impact the city profoundly — from road safety to environmental quality to jobs to tax revenue.
» Read more about: Carson Pledges Support for “Modern-Day Sharecroppers” »
The surprise announcement from the Obama administration that it will delay for one year penalizing employers that do not offer health coverage to their workers is the latest capitulation by the White House to big businesses that want to shirk their responsibility to help pay for health insurance. But the decision leaves huge unanswered questions about whether health coverage for uninsured workers will also be denied.
Yesterday, the Treasury issued a notice delaying for one year, until 2015, the requirement that employers of more than 50 full-time employees (three percent of all employers) report on whether they offer health coverage to their employees. The Affordable Care Act requires that these employers pay penalties when they do not offer qualified coverage or when their workers access coverage through the new health care exchanges. The Treasury’s notice does not change the legal requirement that employers provide coverage,
» Read more about: Christmas in July: Big Companies Get Obamacare Reprieve »
The Supreme Court’s activist conservative majority, in a 5-4 vote on June 25, threw out the provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act which required states and localities (mostly in the Old Confederacy) to clear any changes in electoral law with the federal Department of Justice. The argument was that the criteria and standards used by Congress were obsolete. Congress is invited to revise them, but of course everyone (including the justices) knows that this Congress is too gridlocked to agree on anything of the sort.
But, to paraphrase the old saying, when the Court gives you lemons, make lemonade. As the Court’s opinion affirms, conditions surrounding voting in this country are now radically different than they were in 1965. The old Democratic Solid South with legal discrimination against African American voters has been replaced by a Republican hegemony that is adapted to black voting. At the same time,
The victory in the state Assembly was a narrow one, but a victory nonetheless for Governor Jerry Brown and opponents of California’s troubled enterprise zone program. The zones reward companies with $750 million in annual tax breaks for relocating their businesses to depressed parts of the state – and for replacing their workforces with newer, usually lower paid ones. Thursday, the Assembly approved a bill already passed by the state Senate that would radically overhaul the program.
Although the vote was 54-16, passage required a two-thirds vote, since it amended a tax law; four Republican Assemblymembers joined 50 Democrats in voting for AB 93. The legislation now goes to the governor for his signature.
According to the Los Angeles Times’ Marc Lifsher, “Brown’s proposal, the centerpiece of his economic development strategy, all but eliminates the power of the state’s 40 locally controlled enterprise zones and replaces the program with a broader,
» Read more about: Enterprise Zone Bill Goes to Governor’s Desk »
Wednesday’s Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage represented a major victory in the battle for social justice. But the Court stopped short of proclaiming same-sex marriage a basic right. It left it to the states to determine whether gay Americans have the same right to marry as their straight counterparts.
This is the same logic — states’ rights — that allowed the Court this week to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965, essentially giving states permission to discriminate against Blacks and Latinos in gerrymandering electoral districts and erecting obstacles to voting. Soon, we’re likely to see a number of Republican-controlled states, including Texas, redraw legislative boundaries to make it harder for minority candidates and white liberal candidates backed by minority voters (such as Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis, who courageously waged a filibuster this week to protect women’s reproductive rights) to win public office and to change state laws to make it harder for people to vote.
» Read more about: What the Supreme Court Didn’t Do for Marriage Equality »
For days before Thanksgiving, 2009, Santa Ana winds had been blowing up ash and dust from the massive Station Fire that recently burned north of Los Angeles. The scorching, high-pressure weather system seemed a suitable climate for L.A.’s financial meltdown as the city entered the third year of America’s recessionary slump. Inside City Hall on that Wednesday before the holiday, government representatives and members of the news media listened to the testimony of a man who was on his way to becoming one of Los Angeles’ most powerful figures. He was only 40, held no elective office and had started his job as the City Administrative Officer just three months before.
Yet on this Thanksgiving eve Miguel Santana held the rapt attention of the City Council and journalists as he delivered shocking news: Los Angeles faced an imminent shortfall of $98 million and, based on his projections, the city could be burdened by a $1 billion debt by 2013.
» Read more about: L.A. Budget Czar Miguel Santana’s Shaky Math and Polarizing Ideology »
(Editor’s Update: Luke Dowling’s June 25 piece below references Governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to restructure California’s controversial enterprise zone program. Last night the state Senate approved Brown’s initiative to transform the program. The next move rests with the Assembly, which is considering a Brown-backed measure that would create an alternative to the program.)
The fight over California’s enterprise zone program continued last Friday when John Burton, chairman of the California Democratic Party, proposed a measure for the November 2014 ballot which would give voters the power to eliminate the zones.
This proposal echoes concerns contained in Frying Pan News reporter Gary Cohn’s exposé of the rampant exploitation of the enterprise zone program. These zones are intended to foster the creation of jobs in economically distressed areas of the state by providing financial incentives to companies to move to those areas.
» Read more about: State Senate Approves Enterprise Zone Overhaul »
Reactions to the Supreme Court’s ruling Tuesday that halts the use of a key provision in the landmark Voting Rights Act (VRA) included disappointment, motivation to continue community organizing and a sense that it was fair.
The Associated Press and Equal Voice News collected comments from elected officials and community leaders, who work directly on voter engagement issues and in key states affected by the Supreme Court’s decision.
President Barack Obama:
“I am deeply disappointed with the Supreme Court’s decision today… Today’s decision invalidating one of its core provisions upsets decades of well-established practices that help make sure voting is fair, especially in places where discrimination has been historically prevalent.”
Scott Douglas, executive director of Greater Birmingham Ministries in Alabama:
“Our deepest concern is that if a state like ours had the gall to pass voter suppression and racially-discriminatory laws under the scrutiny of Section 5 of the VRA,
» Read more about: Reactions to High Court’s Voting Rights Act Ruling »
The fight over California’s enterprise zone program continued last Friday when John Burton, chairman of the California Democratic Party, proposed a measure for the November 2014 ballot which would give voters the power to eliminate the zones.
This proposal echoes concerns contained in Frying Pan News reporter Gary Cohn’s exposé of the rampant exploitation of the enterprise zone program. These zones are intended to foster the creation of jobs in economically distressed areas of the state by providing financial incentives to companies to move to those areas. However, a study by the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California found that “enterprise zones have no statistically significant effect on either business creation or employment growth rates.”
Moreover, Senator Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) called the enterprise zones “the most abused program I’ve seen,” adding that they amounted to little more than “a big-industry, big-business tax grab.”
Burton is not the only high-profile California Democrat to come out against the zones —
» Read more about: John Burton Measure Would Eliminate Enterprise Zones »
Representative Paul Ryan is back to his old tricks, demonizing people who rely on government to improve their lives. This week, his target was food stamp recipients.
He’s already come out in favor of $20 billion in cuts that will throw an estimated two million children, elderly, and disabled Americans off food stamps. But now Ryan — the millionaire Wisconsin Congressman who was Mitt Romney’s VP running mate last year — is pushing an amendment to eliminate food stamps for people who have $2,000 in savings, or a car worth more than $5,000.
The Congressional Budget Office found that this would throw 1.8 million people off of the program. The Hill reported, “Most of these would be low-income seniors and working families with children. These families typically live paycheck to paycheck. Denying them the ability to save for emergencies, such as fixing a car,
One of the biggest issues that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is meant to tackle is the lack of health coverage among low-wage workers. While there is good news for many low-wage workers in the new law, many others will still find themselves locked out of access to affordable coverage. Solving their concerns will be one more part of the huge challenge of confronting the power of mammoth low-wage employers in the new economy.
There has been a lot of coverage about the potential for fast food chains and other employers to cut the hours of some of their employees to under 30 a week in order to avoid having to offer them health coverage. To the extent that employers do cut back hours, it will accelerate a long trend toward part-time low wage work; part-timers increased from 17 percent to 22 percent of the workforce just from 2007 to 2011.