Some form of these ads have run during the election season in Arizona, a right to work and employment at will state. No labor laws here too….. and if there are they are putative ……

AZ exempts specific classes of employees from minimum wage laws, such as wait staff. They pay a base rate + tips = minimum wage. The issue is if patrons do not tip well then NO ONE is making minimum wage.

Bob Herbert makes good companion reading with this post wth his column today about the war on workers.

Thanks, Greg. This ad is running in North Dakota targeting Conrad and Dorgan also.

The only ones stooopppeeeeder than Berman are those who sign his checks.

Just wait until Jan Brewer takes over, we will be a right to slavery state.

These folks had radio and TV ads running non-stop during the period prior to the Senate run-off election here. Sleazy and distorting don’t BEGIN to describe them. Labor laws? We don’t need no steenkin’ unions here in Georgia…

Thanks Gregg.

digg

With all these terrible appointments Obi is making, the only possible positive spin I can put to this is that by bring in the “other side” and getting them to enact “his progressive” policies (yet to be completely articulated), he is getting the enemy to come around to his (our) side in without having to “sell” them on his idea. They will do what the boss tells em. And along with this it blunts the criticism from the right that they have been tossed aside, even if no one will actually do anything they want. It’s a kind of kabuki.

Had he staffed up with lefties he would have faced a shitstorm of resistance from the center AND the right.

So this may be some sort of Machiavellian ploy and it remains to be seen where he takes the nation. Obviously screaming progressive may appeal to part of the base which got him elected, but he now has to deal with the thugs in the power structure to get anything done. And it’s not outside the realm of possibility that he could be assassinated by extremists thugs if they perceive he is tacking hard left. He might dancing a bit to literally save his own skin.

Having said that, his cab picks are not inspiring to say the least.

reddit too :)

Associatee Press writer EVELYN NIEVES has a story about the dramatic increase of homeless children attending school due to layoffs and foreclosures. In tough times, ranks of homeless students rising

Republicans hate the children of America because they hate unions and they hate low income families. Start putting a child’s face on what these SOB’s are doing to their fellow citizens.

When the bill comes up I hope that the unions have a stash of cash that can fight all of the bull that we are going to be deluged with.

And the AZ repugs keep trying to close our Thomas J. Pappas school here in Phoenix…. this school is exclusively for homeless children. They provide school supplies, clothes, send backpacks home with food for the families and track the kids/families to keep the kids in school. They have an extensive bus system to find their kids.

In August the homeless shelters reported that they had an increase of 5000 more families needing shelter. How many more since then?

Union related, but a little OT

This is another point of vulnerability for the plantation caucus and their union busting. During the Bush years they gobbled up a lot of money that was supposed to go to state Child Welfare workers, who, I suspect, are unionized in most states. Tragicly, the kids in the hands of the Republican private agencies keep dying.

Woman Who
Drowned Son Given Give Years in Prison

This is from comments at a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel blog

“I worked for New Ventures – the agency prior to La Causa. I left after we were given holiday bonuses of $500-700 I left. I could not get my clients things that they needed such as warm coats or cribs, and felt that this was a misuse of money. I also recalled the CEO to be driving a luxury car, taking long vacations to Africa and the Carribean and walking around in mink coats. She was making way too much money off of the poor people in our community. These private agencies do make money and the top people are getting rich while the hard working OCM are struggling along the best that they can.”

Other comments get much more explicitly into the question of union versus non-union.

Based on the JS reporting, the state is paying the case worker around $17,000 per case. That’s 100% for case work. It doesn’t include what the case might get for daycare, medical and dental assistance from the taxpayers. It’s pretty obvious the plantation caucus wanted to suck on that, because quality control is a joke.

I did an Oxdown diary on this one:

Disability Rights Wisconsin: “A Tragic Result of a Failure to Act: The Death of Angie Arndt” 1999 – 2006

Same pattern, a private agency kills the kid. The photos of this girl are just heart-breaking.

I hope the unions can get these kinds of stories and given them the kind of sunlight they deserve. Whether they exist within the scope of FDL’s brand is way beyone my pay grade.

Republicans hate poor people becuz’ their Jesus hates them too and hasn’t blessed them with McMansions.

Look what happens here
http://www.kypost.com/news/loc…..qi4hw.cspx

Heh…PW’s upstairs with lunch!

Thanks.

(((katymine)))

In FL we have a minimum wage for servers. It’s something like $2 and change. The law also stopped employers playing games with tips.

Actually, these appointments have been getting rave reviews from scientist types:

President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday named a Harvard physicist and a marine biologist to science posts, signaling a change from Bush administration policies on global warming that were criticized for putting politics over science.

Both John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco are leading experts on climate change who have advocated forceful government response. Holdren will become Obama’s science adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Lubchenco will lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees ocean and atmospheric studies and does much of the government’s research on global warming.

Holdren also will direct the president’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. Joining him as co-chairs will be Nobel Prize-winning scientist Harold Varmus, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Eric Lander, a specialist in human genome research.

Here’s this week’s radio address where the appointment announcements were made: Obama’s Science Team Rollout Radio Address