Good news: President Obama has indefinitely banned oil and gas drilling in Bristol Bay, Alaska, a cause for which we've agitated here. Only an incoming President can reverse the ban, which a Republican President almost certainly will, because Obama. Sen. Murkowski (R-AK) doesn't oppose the ban, but finds it "frustrating" that the Obama Administration sees "conservation" as Alaska's "most pressing need." Then again, Republicans see "more money for their corporate paymasters" as all of America's most pressing need.
Fifteen Senators sign a letter to the SEC demanding that they implement a CEO-to-worker pay disclosure rule as mandated by the Dodd-Frank law. Financial corporations -- being, as they are, run by people without any sense of shame -- have pressured the SEC to delay or water down the rule, and they seem to be getting their way so far. SEC Chair Mary Jo White may prove to be an even worse Obama appointment than FCC Chair Tom Wheeler.
Nicole Flatow at Think Progress tells us all about "jump-outs," which is when a handful of police officers drive up and jump out of their cars all armed and armored-up -- and these police usually "jump out," observers tell us, at congregations of young black men on the street. Warrants? We don't need no stinkin' warrants! Funny how the drug problem never seems to get better in America, no matter how many unconstitutional acts we throw at it. It's almost like that's the idea. And the "war on terror" is exactly the same.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, upholding a seven-year old lower court ruling, ordered WalMart to pay $188 million in a class-action wage theft lawsuit. But WalMart will keep appealing, all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary, out of its CEOs' obviously very-deeply held conviction that all those people who sued them shouldn't have been allowed to sue as a class. That looks more to me like a "frivolous lawsuit" than any of the stupid stories tort "reformers" belch out.
And here's yet another odious result from that omnibus spending law Congress passed over the weekend: it allows pension plan trustees to cut benefits for current pensioners. Everybody understands that the future is the hardest thing to predict, but everybody also understands that pension funds should be investing safely, rather than giving themselves over to hedge funds, and everybody also understands that, you know, you should keep your damn promises.
Finally, fossil fuel corporation front group creates a cartoon calling the alleged effects of EPA environmental regulation "torture." But fossil fuel corporate CEOs will have a tough time convincing very many Americans that making a little less money -- the only actual negative effect of clean air and clean water regulations -- is anything like being beaten up, being forced to stand on broken feet, or being waterboarded. More likely they'll convince Americans that they're the biggest whiners in American history.
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