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White Collar Crime Watch the video » — Dec 10
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Trump buried a wildly anti-LGBTQ provision in the new North American trade deal The Trump administration seems to have edited out LGBTQ protections in the new North American trade agreement with Canada and Mexico (known as the USMCA). The change, an apparent gesture to a group of the most anti-LGBTQ members of Congress, ensures the administration’s own anti-LGBTQ efforts can continue without undermining the agreement. Originally, the drafted trade agreement called on all three countries to establish “policies that protect workers against employment discrimination on the basis of sex, including with regard to pregnancy, sexual harassment, sexual orientation, gender identity.” In the final version, however, a new footnote was added that significantly undermines the United States’ obligation to uphold these protections. It states:
The United States’ existing federal agency policies regarding the hiring of federal workers are sufficient to fulfill the obligations set forth in this Article. The Article thus requires no additional action on the part of the United States, including any amendments to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in order for the United States to be in compliance with the obligations set forth in this Article.
This is a reference to a pair of Executive Orders President Obama implemented protecting both federal employees and the employees of federal contractors from discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity. All of the country’s other LGBTQ workers enjoy no enumerated protection under the law, though many courts have agreed that Title VII’s protections on the basis of “sex” also protect LGBTQ people. — Dec 10 -
What's Wrong with GM? Corporations’ stranglehold on our economy was put on further display last week, when General Motors announced it was laying off up to 14,000 workers across North America. On a special episode of “State of the Unions,” co-host Tim Schlittner talked with AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council Executive Director Brad Markell, a lifelong UAW member, about what the layoffs say about the state of the economy as a whole: Tim Schlittner: “Reading the CEO’s statement, Mary Barra, where she says this is about making GM agile, resilient and profitable, then thinking about all the stock buybacks, thinking about some of the incentives they got in the tax law that just passed. Mary Barra made about $22 million last year—that’s 295 times more than the GM median employee—my feeling is like this is crap. That’s just a crap excuse for hoarding more at the top, at the expense of the workers that make GM go. Am I wrong to say that?” Brad Markell: “I think there are a couple issues there from my point of view. Mary Barra makes a lot of money and executive pay is out of control in this country. Part of what’s the problem with executive pay is how is it incentivized? It’s not that Mary Barra making $22 million is going to kill the company. It’s what does she do to get there, right? What does she do to make those cuts and—and those things that Wall Street wants to see because so much of it’s stock options—so instead of playing to the real economy, you’re playing to Wall Street. That’s a problem.” Tim Schlittner: “And the stock went up that day. So Wall Street saw this decision to close these plants and basically took that as a positive sign, which shows to me an economy that is completely out of whack.” Take a listen to the full episode here. *** — Dec 10
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Mitch McConnell is personally denying Donald Trump a win that nearly everyone would celebrate The one and only decent idea to emanate from the Trump White House — a bill that proposes reforms to the nation’s archaic criminal justice system — is about to die in Congress’ lame-duck session because of one man: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky). True to the form of our hyper-dysfunctional politics, McConnell is openly defying the president as well as a large contingent of GOP senators by refusing to bring the measure to a vote before the current session ends. The irony of McConnell’s spiking the only idea that has a sliver of merit from the White House is a bright-line example of just how dysfunctional Congress has become. Even though this criminal reform legislation is favored by President Donald Trump and key White House insiders, a significant number of GOP lawmakers, and nearly all of the Democrats in Congress, its chances of passage are doomed because the Senate’s top Republican doesn’t like the bill. “Each passing day they get less,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Politico earlier this week, speculating on the odds of the bill’s passage. “We’re still lobbying Sen. McConnell. He has all the power to allow it or not allow it.” The legislation — popularly known by its acronymic name, the FIRST STEP Act — is a package of policies intended “to help reduce the risk that prisoners will recidivate upon release from prison.” In particular, the bill would reform mandatory minimum sentences for certain non-violent repeat drug offenders and eliminate the three-strike required life sentence provisions. Additionally, the bill would encourage individuals in federal prisons to receive educational, vocational, and therapeutic assistance and offer time-off credit for the successful completion of such programs. It would also increase the use of home detention, post-release transitional, and electronic monitoring programs. — Dec 9
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GLUE: Gorgeous Ladies Unionizing Everywhere! Watch the video » — Dec 8