Good morning Attaturk.

Do you mean McCain is old, stupid a vet or all 3?

ehy Attaturk….

Three major categories of discrimination claimants:

- Gender
- Race
- Age

Thx

add: sexual orientation…

how are we feeling today?

OK, we decided the Bohdisattva needed to go back to sleeping in a pen because it’s really crowded in the rack and mrs boo boo has to wear the giant brace wilst in the land of winkin, blinkin and nod!

Not as a Federal Statutory Right.

Sadly.

But this isn’t a listing of all protected classes of discrimination, only that the 3 remaining Presidential candidates fit into three of the most common ones.

Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Thursday, March 6, 2008 — 6:01 AM ET
BREAKING NEWS!!!

Police Investigate Explosion in Times Square

Much of Times Square in New York City was cordoned off after
an explosion rocked the front of the Armed Forces Recruiting
Station early Thursday morning. No injuries were immediately
reported.

Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/?emc=na

your package should arrive tomorrow. am surprised US Postal Service can’t deliver next-day service to your zip-code…Isn’t Athens a college town? Weird…

It’s a major university community!

Here is our music and politics rag

And the report from the Beeb:

Times Square Closed over Blast

The explosion happened near an army recruiting centre
US police have cordoned off a section of New York City’s Times Square to investigate a small explosion.

A man on a bicycle is believed to have thrown both an explosive device and an incendiary device at a military recruitment centre.

The plate glass window of the centre was smashed. No-one was hurt. Police have not arrested anybody.

Members of the police department’s bomb squad and fire department officials were at the scene.

Cars and police tape blocked the surrounding streets.

At one point, subway trains passed through Times Square station without stopping, but normal service has resumed.

I have problems with the clause in the first place;

Attorneys for Halliburton and KBR argued that the contract Jones signed binds her to settle all claims — including claims of sexual assault — against her former employer through arbitration.

there are certain clauses that are not valid whether you sign the clause or not

for instance, I can’t sign my life into servitude, I can’t sign to you the right to murder me

I cannot believe the judge allowed this clause to be valid in the first place

Good morning, pups. It’s Collins, Cohen and Kristof today. La Collins says that of all the things that went right for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, the Ohio primary win was most impressive. Mr. Cohen writes about “The Obamas of the World” and says that piecing together Barack Obama’s family is like piecing together the world. It’s a rich experience, but not easy. Mr. Kristof’s column is titled “Good News: Karlo Will Live.” He says African children like Karlo may actually have more at stake in the outcome of the presidential election than children in the United States.

http://mgpaquin.wordpress.com/

The coffee, tea and hot chocolate are ready, and I’ve got banana pancakes this morning. Have a grand day.

In other news, W’s overtures to OPEC to increase production were met with a resounding “buzz off,” and the statement that the reason oil prices are so high is the mismanagement of the American economy.

Oh oh time for another war to bail out the bushies

March 6 (Bloomberg) — Carlyle Group’s publicly traded mortgage bond fund failed to meet margin calls and said it received a notice of default.

Carlyle Capital Corp. missed four of seven margin calls yesterday totaling more than $37 million, the Guernsey, U.K.- based fund said today in a statement. The fund expects to get at least one more notice of default related to the margin calls.

Last time the carlyle group was in financial difficulties Afganistan and Iraq saved the day.

great link, Raven…lotsa goings ons, even if US Postal Service can’t deliver next-day…

Oh lordy banana pancakes. That sounds way too delicious. I vote for VT maple syrup for true decadence.

Where the heck is Krugman. Is he on vacation yet again. He takes more vacation that the chimp!

Did you know that the chimp is “listening to facts”. He says that

Now, look, I understand stereotypes are hard to defeat. People get an image planted in their head, and sometimes it causes them not to listen to the facts. But America is in the lead when it comes to energy independence; we’re in the lead when it comes to new technologies; we’re in the lead when it comes to global climate change — and we’ll stay that way.

Who would have known?

Good Morning
*passing Marion the maple syrup for those delicious pancakes*
It’s nice to have friends isn’t it? But am I surprised OPEC says “screw you”? No.

And margin calls on the Carlyle Group! the end is suredly nigh, or their sting is stung -US

and pass that on to nomolos

Criminal matters are not subject to arbitration. That’s insane.

You can arbitrate civil wrongs but not criminal ones. That should be prosecuted by the ”state”/ government.

I don’t see how a corporation can assume jurisdiction of criminal matters?

This is total BS.

OPEC has bush by the balls. They could happily peg oil to the Euro, or the rubble for that matter, and send ‘merca into a death spiral. China would be none to happy as they are holding most of the US dollars out there on the other hand China would willingly sacrifice a few bucks to sink the great satan.

Besides it is not OPEC that is fucking us it is the oils companies with their outrageous profits

I agree, it’s an outrage

absolutely OT but can you keep J Howard with you – we don’t want him here – AEI wants him, that’s fine by us – as long as he is nowhere near our shores to hold us back for stuff that we should have done ages ago. PLEASE pretty please, keep him with you, we don’t want him.

IIRC from Business Law, the term is unconscionable.
And whether or not a clause is unconscionable is a finding of the Court.
Yet another reminder of why a vote for any Dem is better this year.
The court is stacked with Judges who would consider this a labor dispute, not a matter of human rights.
A few of them sit on the Supreme Court.

It is a matter of juristiction.
IIRC the rape occurred in Iraq, where the US strong-armed the Iraq govt into exempting US contractors from Iraqi criminal code.

It is that.

But it is also agency law.

Individuals commit the crime of rape, but they do it while they are agents of the corporation.

Supervisory acts are imputed to a corporation … if an act is done by non-supervisors, then the question is one of supervisory knowledge and action about such matters.

only that the 3 remaining Presidential candidates fit into three of the most common ones.

Are we sure about Hillary and, er, sexual orientation? Read this book by Carl Bernstein, A Woman in Charge…

IANAL, but I think that agency is an element of civil law.
Don’t get me wrong. Any reasonable judge would find the employment clause specious and unconsciousable.
But if the case went to the SCOTUS, I could see Scalia wringing his hands and saying
“But you signed the contract”

A “Reliable Source”

Suppose it wasn’t rape, but murder? How can this be a matter for the corporation handle outside the justice system? Or determine how it is to be adjudicated?

How is it possible for the US to determine whose laws govern within a sovereign nation?

If a criminal act occurs in a foreign country that country’s laws should apply. We cannot negate their jurisdiction by “decree”.

Total rubbish

thanx for the proper terminology

it’s unconsionable a judge wouldn’t find that clause unconsionable as it applies to rape

man, I wonder what his findings would be if that person were his wife or his kid

these are sick people

In related news, this morning’s Boston Globe has a long article about how KBR hired 2/3 of their employees through a Cayman Islands shell company to avoid paying unemployment compensation, employer income taxes, social security taxes, and workman’s comp. It is as sleazy as you can imagine.

Needless to say, when the employees got injured or laid off, they had nothing to fall back on. Many of them had no idea that they were employees of a foreign firm. There’s more awfulness in the article. I’m not sure my link will show up, but it’s the top story on today’s Globe.

My very own Senator from Florida, Bill Nelson, has taken on this cause and is doing his best to get more investigation of the responses of the contracting companies. Sadly, this problem is quite widespread:

The U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigation Command has reported that it investigated 124 cases of sexual assault in Iraq over the past three years. Those figures, provided to Senator Bill Nelson, the Florida Democrat who has taken the lead in the Senate on the issue, include cases involving both contractors and military personnel but do not include cases involving contractors or soldiers investigated by other branches of the military.

I think the Senator deserves a hearty thank-you for taking on a difficult issue and fighting for the rights of people who have been mightily wronged by the system. I hope that other Senators will join him and that real prosecutions, rather than arbitration, can result.

Veritas at 35–that’s outrageous.

You know, they can say we’re tax and spend Democrats, but at least we PAY taxes!! Unlike the *cough* patriotic *cough* corporations who scam like this one did.

In related news, this morning’s Boston Globe has a long article about how KBR hired 2/3 of their employees through a Cayman Islands shell company to avoid paying unemployment compensation, employer income taxes, social security taxes, and workman’s comp. It is as sleazy as you can imagine.

war profiteers, the lowest scum on the planet, and those in the administration that invented this war with their only purpose being profit

I expect this to surface amongst the mouth-breathers in the fall should Clinton be the nominee. Maybe sooner.

Mornin’ Attaturk and Firedogs,

nomolos – – $37M is lunch money to these folks, hell, it’s casual friday lunch money – from that same Bloomberg article

The Carlyle fund raised $300 million in July and used loans to buy about $22 billion of AAA rated so-called agency mortgage securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Masters of the Financial Universe my ass

A bit off OT, but- Suddenly it appears the Republicans are upset about free trade as Boeing failed to win the Tanker contract. Tiahart is on Washington Journal being disingenuous, blaming everyone and everything but the Republicans for the Boeing’s loss.

They will never vacate this contract without the WTO going nuts…

I wish I could link directly, but that Globe article is worth a read. The shell company whose name was on the paychecks is called Service Employers International. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Why, it’s only one letter off from a major union! So if you were wondering who you actually worked for, you might think “Oh, I must be in that union and they’re actually paying me.”

How wrong you would be. I can just imagine the fun KBR management had coming up with that name.

Here is the Globe KBR Story

Profiteers will only play with a stacked deck of cards.
Their back-up is the cards are also marked.

Along the lines of what someone already posted–

How is it that ANY company can have someone sign away their rights–their humanity? Isn’t that an unalienable right?

OT, but there’s been a huge watermain break in downtown Cleveland.

Streets are buckling around it, businesses without water, which means they will have to close, which means lost revenue. It happens here every 2-3 years like clockwork.

It will now get fixed of course, but at emergency rates vs. regular rates.

But BushCo doesn’t think we need to address the problem of decaying infrastructure in this country.

These people are literally running this country into the ground.

Did Rezko co-defendants also give money to the Clintons?

http://www.margieburns.com/blo…..01879.html

Uh oh.

Also OT. Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza. These are the people our Congress issued a condemnation against yesterday. Makes me so proud.

Any judge – except possibly one appointed by George Bush – would void the arbitration clause in the context of credible claims that the employer performed or condoned violent criminal acts against another employee.

As apparently applied here, had this employee been raped and murdered by a company vice president, her estate would have to arbitrate the claim. A perfect example of the oxymoronic “Texas justice” so admired by Mr. B.

Mr. Bush saw that statute of Justice once and thought she was blind to all injustice. Since he never changes his mind – especially when he’s most wrong – he’s never accepted that it signifies that justice is blind to power and privilege, and applies herself equally to all. But then what’s the advantage of privilege if you can’t abuse it, eh?

Congress Defends Gaza Assault 404-1

Today Congress passed a resolution (HR 951) condemning Palestinian rocket attacks that include a strident defense of recent Israeli tactics in the Gaza Strip. The resolution also condemned Iran and Syria for “sponsoring terror attacks,” and demanded that Saudi Arabia publicly condemn Palestinian actions.

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/20…..ult-404-1/

(funny how congress can actually act in lockstep when it suits them, isn’t it? only Ron Paul voted no on this, btw; some others voted present or not at all)

what is not suprising is that this congressional measure is nearly absent in the “news” so most murkins won’t even know about it, much less question it and they’ll just go ahead and trust their reps. without challenging them! but then again, the massacre and ongoing violence and abject misery in Gaza is mostly absent from what passes as mainstream “news” in this country.

make no mistake though, the rest of the world is paying attention…….

File a CRIMINAL complaint. Crimes are not bound by civil contracts.

Attaturk,

I work for a Union representing federal employees. I bring this up because your first entry on this issue really hit a nerve for me. So much so that I couldn’t let it go, and wondered how I can get involved. Last week, it finally hit me. There’s very little I can do for these women on the criminal charges directly, but I can help to make sure that employment contracts with arbitration clauses like this never happen again, at least with Government Contractors.

This is all very new to me, so I have no idea how to start it up, but my idea is to lobby for legislation that prohibits any company doing business with the Federal Government from requiring employees to submit to arbitration clauses. In other words, employees of government contractors should have the same access to courts as federal employees (seeing as many of them are performing work that used to be performed by federal employees).

The list of likely organizations to support this legislation would be pretty broad. Federal Employee unions like AFGE, AFSCME, NFFE, NAGE, NTEU, etc. will support it because these arbitration clauses are used by contractors to keep labor costs down so they can underbid federal agencies to win contracts for government work under a system called A-76. That results in fewer federal employees that are represented by Unions (and these contractors are rarely, if ever, organized).

I imagine Women’s Rights and Civil Rights Organizations would also support such legislation for the obvious reasons. Women, minorities, and other groups of protected employees should have the inalienable right to their day in court.

And good government groups should support it for the same obvious reasons. Government Contractors often operate in a shadowy world, especially overseas. Ensuring some level of accountability by preserving the right to bring actions to court is a good way to bring accountability to these contractors since the federal government has shown itself unwilling and unable to enforce accountability.

So the bottom line is, do you think this is a good idea, and if so, do you have any recommendations how to start lobbying for this kind of legislation? I’m serious about pushing this issue with my members of Congress (Barbara Lee, Boxer, and Feinstein), but it’s not something one person can do alone.

Arbitration clauses have become nearly universal in all kinds of contracts, and they have been upheld in the courts. I’m working on a resolution for our party precinct meetings along the lines of “Be it resolved that any contractual clause imposed as a condition of employment, service, or other commercial or financial relationship that an individual waive rights otherwise available under the civil law. In all cases, where the contract clause predated a dispute between the parties, the otherwise existing civil law will take precedence.”

I’d really like to see the issue of forced arbitration discussed in this campaign. I think it’s past time that “we the people” have more input into these employment contracts instead of being at the mercy of unscrupulous corporations. It is also my understanding that forced arbitration language has also found it’s way into all kinds of other contracts (insurance, mortgages, etc.).Maybe we should send emails to each of the three campaigns to see what our candidates have to say about this. Thanks for posting this entry.

@55, my resolution got garbled as I wrote. It comes down to, “If you waived rights as a condition of employment or purchase, the waiver has no force.”