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On February 11 2015 07:59 Millitron wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2015 07:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On February 11 2015 07:21 Millitron wrote:On February 11 2015 07:12 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On February 11 2015 06:35 Millitron wrote:On February 11 2015 06:29 GreenHorizons wrote:A Papa John’s pizza franchise in New York must pay its workers nearly $800,000 in unpaid wages over allegations the business underpaid employees and failed to pay overtime, a state judge ruled last week.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in December sued Emstar Pizza Inc., which operates seven Papa John’s franchise locations in Brooklyn and Queens, alleging that Emstar underreported hours worked by employees over the past six years, rounded employee hours down to the nearest hour, and did not pay overtime.
“This judgment sends a clear message that like every other business in New York, fast food employers must follow the law,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “This Papa John’s franchisee brazenly violated the law, shaving employees’ hours and avoiding paying overtime by various means, including giving managerial sounding titles such as ‘head driver.’” SourceDURHAM, N.C. — Durham police have charged two employees with stealing money and pizza bags from a Papa John's restaurant on West Main Street last week.
Kenneth Jamal Graves, 19, of Massey Avenue in Durham, and Todd Phillip Bryan, 31, of Pine Hill Drive in Chapel Hill, are both charged with larceny by an employee.
Graves was arrested Tuesday morning on Cecil Street, thanks to a Crime Stoppers tip, police said. SourceSteal at least $800,000 from your employees and you get a fine (sort of), steal ~$1000 from your employer and you're a felon and go to prison... Sounds like justice right? That's what happens when you treat corporations like people. The employees responsible for underpaying should be punished as well, just fining the company does no good. What does any of that have to do with treating corporations like people? The franchise isn't likely to be a corporation (at least not a c-corp) anyways. Its holding a company responsible when a company is nothing more than a collection of individuals. The company can't feel shame or guilt. Fining a company for the misdeeds of its employees does nothing to the specific people responsible. Its like in elementary school when one kid would act up and the teacher would cancel recess for the whole class, except even worse because there's no guarantee that the person responsible is one of the ones who will feel the sting of the fine. What are the odds that any exec who knew about or even ordered this wage theft will lose any money? It's not a large company so the 'exec' is likely the owner. Edit: yeah a guy and his estranged wife own them. Corporate personhood doesn't mean that you can't go after specific individuals anyways. Those aren't mutually exclusive things. Corporations do tend to never have an exec held accountable though. Holding a corporation accountable does nothing to prevent corporations from breaking the law, because corporations don't have feelings. You can't shame them, you can't make them feel guilty, you can't jail them.
It depends on the specifics that you're talking about. Sometimes an exec is at fault. Other times it is regular employees. Sometimes both, and sometimes it's an organizational failure.
You seem to have a 'feeling' that not enough execs are in jail and that somehow the corporate form is to blame. I disagree. I don't think that turning a corp into a partnership would change much since you'd still have to go in and actually figure out who is at fault and then prove it in court. That's often really hard to do, even assuming that there are specific people you can go after and that there's a specific law against that person's actions.
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Rather than discuss this in such broad theoretical terms where things are getting pretty shifty, let's ask directly:
Name a corporation whose executives that you think deserve to be prosecuted but have not been. Or a situation in which the nonhuman corporation paid criminal liability but the human executives went unpunished.
I think examples certainly exist (MF Global and Jon Corzine come to mind first), but it would be easier to talk about their specific situations rather than corporate executives in grossly generalized terms.
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So what are the odds that NBC replaces Brian Williams with Jon Stewart?
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100% that NBC is trying. Why Jon Stewart would want to move to NBC is beyond me. It's more money and a bigger audience, yes, but that also means losing a lot of creative and journalistic freedom.
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Leibowitz's got the ratings if NBC can grab him. I don't really know beyond that.
Writing this as a Spanish-language ad for Covered California (Obamacare's CA state exchange) is playing up top. There's also two sign-up centers less than 2 miles away from my place (signs in English), 3 Spanish billboards in that radius, and of course the Korean-language and Chinese-language ads in their respective parts of LA driving during work. Serious advertising dough being spent on signups out here on the left coast.
+ Show Spoiler +
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So Brian Williams is jobless now? Poor guy. I liked him.
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It's kind of funny to watch the older news people cover for him and speak so well of him because they likely know they have done the same thing at some point in their career.
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On February 11 2015 09:58 xDaunt wrote:
So what are the odds that NBC replaces Brian Williams with Jon Stewart?
He's repeatedly turned down advances by news stations to get him to move. He loves the Daily Show and I think he'll retire as the Daily Show host.
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On February 11 2015 09:20 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2015 08:28 xDaunt wrote:
This is all horseshit. Employees, officers, owners, and agents of corporations will always be liable for their own criminal actions and fraudulent actions -- regardless of corporate liability. Period. And before one you asks about the wage theft issue, guess what? It's generally not a crime. There has to be a penal statute on point designating it as a crime for it to be criminal. Generally speaking, employers who fuck with their employees' earnings are subject to incredibly stiff civil penalties where the employee typically will recover a multiple of what was owed plus an award for attorney fees and costs. In other words, the employee will be just fine. That's my point. Employers have to have been stealing money for an extended time, it has to be egregiously obvious, the employee generally has to have a good-great history, and virtually no one is going to take a case for a few thousand dollars so they have to find several other employees who care about a small chance at a few thousand dollars and justice more than they care about the potential of losing their job and not getting any money. Xerox is a great example of wage theft where they had hundreds of employees just in my own building that they told to work off the clock every day. But with a turnover over 50% there is virtually no one who would have a chance as a named plaintiff. Not to mention "Justice" and "The law" are not synonymous. There are plenty of ridiculously unjust things that were/are should be criminal and just actions that are/were/shouldn't be illegal. Just because the law was followed/broken does not mean one's/the laws actions were justified (which seems particularly hard for some lawyers to see).
Sounds like employees should really organize in some sort of union to combat that kind of corporate behaviour. Basically, a single employee is weak, but if most of the employees work together they no longer are. But for some inexplicable reason americans really hate unions.
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Yea, I just saw this.
Really sad to see him go. He has a special kind of talent and I don't think he can be replaced, either by someone else on the Daily Show or a new show altogether.
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On February 11 2015 09:53 coverpunch wrote:
Rather than discuss this in such broad theoretical terms where things are getting pretty shifty, let's ask directly:
Name a corporation whose executives that you think deserve to be prosecuted but have not been. Or a situation in which the nonhuman corporation paid criminal liability but the human executives went unpunished.
I think examples certainly exist (MF Global and Jon Corzine come to mind first), but it would be easier to talk about their specific situations rather than corporate executives in grossly generalized terms.
Well, certainly someone at Ford was responsible for allowing Pintos to continue to be sold despite knowing they were unsafe. I don't believe Ford was ever held criminally liable, but they probably should've been. No one was held legally responsible for the insane negligence involved in the Times Beach Dioxin spill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Beach,_Missouri#NEPACCO_chemical_waste_disposal
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On February 11 2015 11:54 Stratos_speAr wrote:Yea, I just saw this. Really sad to see him go. He has a special kind of talent and I don't think he can be replaced, either by someone else on the Daily Show or a new show altogether.
You could tell for a while now (particularly since he got back from shooting his movie) that he felt too old to be telling some of the jokes he had to tell to stay relevant to his show's demo.
I could especially tell the last few shows that this move was imminent.
I wouldn't mind him going off to make more movies (as a director). Whatever he does, hopefully he keeps making something.
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The world's largest solar plant began producing electricity this week in California’s Riverside County desert, as a series of successful, federally-backed utility projects show sunlight becoming an increasingly competitive energy source.
Gov. Jerry Brown has called on California to increase green electricity up to 50 percent by 2030, up from the current goal of 33 percent by 2020. His call came about a month before Monday’s dedication of the Desert Sunlight Solar Farm — which can power up to 160,000 homes.
The majority of state governments now require a significant portion of electricity to come from renewable sources, and President Barack Obama has pledged action to speed a transition to clean energy.
"Solar projects like Desert Sunlight are helping create American jobs, develop domestic renewable energy and cut carbon pollution," U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement issued Monday. "I applaud the project proponents for their vision and entrepreneurial spirit to build this solar project, and commend Gov. Brown for implementing policies that take action on climate change and help move our nation toward a renewable energy future."
The project’s launch follows the opening of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System — which can power up to 140,000 homes — last year in California’s Mojave Desert. Nationwide the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has approved 52 large renewable energy projects, including 29 solar plants, since 2009.
Desert Sunlight is constructed on about 4,000 acres of federal land and is owned by NextEra Energy Resources, GE Energy Financial Services and Sumitomo Corporation of America. First Solar, an Arizona-based energy company, is building and operating the plant, according to the California Energy Commission.
The project was made possible through federal loan guarantees amounting to $1.5 billion. The Energy Department said Monday it has provided a total of $4.6 billion in such guarantees to support five large photovoltaic solar projects including Ivanpah in the Southwest, at a time when developers were struggling to obtain financing.
Commercial lenders were not willing to approve loans for such projects because solar plants had not been built at that large a scale in the U.S. before, the Department of Energy said on its website. It said all five projects for which it provided loan guarantees are generating clean electricity and repaying loans.
Today the United States has enough solar projects to power 1.4 million average American homes, according to the Department of Energy.
Source
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On February 11 2015 12:24 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Show nested quote +The world's largest solar plant began producing electricity this week in California’s Riverside County desert, as a series of successful, federally-backed utility projects show sunlight becoming an increasingly competitive energy source.
Gov. Jerry Brown has called on California to increase green electricity up to 50 percent by 2030, up from the current goal of 33 percent by 2020. His call came about a month before Monday’s dedication of the Desert Sunlight Solar Farm — which can power up to 160,000 homes.
The majority of state governments now require a significant portion of electricity to come from renewable sources, and President Barack Obama has pledged action to speed a transition to clean energy.
"Solar projects like Desert Sunlight are helping create American jobs, develop domestic renewable energy and cut carbon pollution," U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement issued Monday. "I applaud the project proponents for their vision and entrepreneurial spirit to build this solar project, and commend Gov. Brown for implementing policies that take action on climate change and help move our nation toward a renewable energy future."
The project’s launch follows the opening of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System — which can power up to 140,000 homes — last year in California’s Mojave Desert. Nationwide the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has approved 52 large renewable energy projects, including 29 solar plants, since 2009.
Desert Sunlight is constructed on about 4,000 acres of federal land and is owned by NextEra Energy Resources, GE Energy Financial Services and Sumitomo Corporation of America. First Solar, an Arizona-based energy company, is building and operating the plant, according to the California Energy Commission.
The project was made possible through federal loan guarantees amounting to $1.5 billion. The Energy Department said Monday it has provided a total of $4.6 billion in such guarantees to support five large photovoltaic solar projects including Ivanpah in the Southwest, at a time when developers were struggling to obtain financing.
Commercial lenders were not willing to approve loans for such projects because solar plants had not been built at that large a scale in the U.S. before, the Department of Energy said on its website. It said all five projects for which it provided loan guarantees are generating clean electricity and repaying loans.
Today the United States has enough solar projects to power 1.4 million average American homes, according to the Department of Energy. Source
With $4.5B in federal subsidies, I could be a profitable electricity generator too. Good to see my tax dollars going to such fine uses. We are due for another Solyndra any day now...
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The federal program that funded Solyndra turned a profit of around 5 billion iirc. Definitely wouldn't want another one of those.
Edit: Ok, so it wasn't "profit" per se, but the program was hardly a financial failure.
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On February 11 2015 12:12 Millitron wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2015 09:53 coverpunch wrote:
Rather than discuss this in such broad theoretical terms where things are getting pretty shifty, let's ask directly:
Name a corporation whose executives that you think deserve to be prosecuted but have not been. Or a situation in which the nonhuman corporation paid criminal liability but the human executives went unpunished.
I think examples certainly exist (MF Global and Jon Corzine come to mind first), but it would be easier to talk about their specific situations rather than corporate executives in grossly generalized terms. Well, certainly someone at Ford was responsible for allowing Pintos to continue to be sold despite knowing they were unsafe. I don't believe Ford was ever held criminally liable, but they probably should've been. No one was held legally responsible for the insane negligence involved in the Times Beach Dioxin spill. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Beach,_Missouri#NEPACCO_chemical_waste_disposal
IIRC Pintos were about as safe as other cars on the road at the time and after the recall was made a lot of people didn't even bother to participate. It was certainly less safe than it could have been, but you can say the same for every car ever made.
As for the Times Beach incident, the wiki article makes it sound like what they did wasn't at the time illegal.
In either case... what does this have to do with the corporate form?
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On February 11 2015 12:24 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Show nested quote +The world's largest solar plant began producing electricity this week in California’s Riverside County desert, as a series of successful, federally-backed utility projects show sunlight becoming an increasingly competitive energy source.
Gov. Jerry Brown has called on California to increase green electricity up to 50 percent by 2030, up from the current goal of 33 percent by 2020. His call came about a month before Monday’s dedication of the Desert Sunlight Solar Farm — which can power up to 160,000 homes.
The majority of state governments now require a significant portion of electricity to come from renewable sources, and President Barack Obama has pledged action to speed a transition to clean energy.
"Solar projects like Desert Sunlight are helping create American jobs, develop domestic renewable energy and cut carbon pollution," U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement issued Monday. "I applaud the project proponents for their vision and entrepreneurial spirit to build this solar project, and commend Gov. Brown for implementing policies that take action on climate change and help move our nation toward a renewable energy future."
The project’s launch follows the opening of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System — which can power up to 140,000 homes — last year in California’s Mojave Desert. Nationwide the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has approved 52 large renewable energy projects, including 29 solar plants, since 2009.
Desert Sunlight is constructed on about 4,000 acres of federal land and is owned by NextEra Energy Resources, GE Energy Financial Services and Sumitomo Corporation of America. First Solar, an Arizona-based energy company, is building and operating the plant, according to the California Energy Commission.
The project was made possible through federal loan guarantees amounting to $1.5 billion. The Energy Department said Monday it has provided a total of $4.6 billion in such guarantees to support five large photovoltaic solar projects including Ivanpah in the Southwest, at a time when developers were struggling to obtain financing.
Commercial lenders were not willing to approve loans for such projects because solar plants had not been built at that large a scale in the U.S. before, the Department of Energy said on its website. It said all five projects for which it provided loan guarantees are generating clean electricity and repaying loans.
Today the United States has enough solar projects to power 1.4 million average American homes, according to the Department of Energy. Source
I don't have much to say except that this is pretty awesome. I love the look of these huge solar farms. Makes me feel like I'm living in science fiction.
I kinda wish that $4.6 billion had gone into researching Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors, but this is still pretty cool.
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Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) on Tuesday unilaterally rescinded rules that had protected state workers from discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
Brownback said an anti-discrimination order issued in 2007 by then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D), should have been done through legislation.
“This Executive Order ensures that state employees enjoy the same civil rights as all Kansans without creating additional ‘protected classes’ as the previous order did,” Brownback said in a statement. “Any such expansion of ‘protected classes’ should be done by the legislature and not through unilateral action. The order also reaffirms our commitment to hiring, mentoring and recognizing veterans and individuals with disabilities.”
The order signed by Sebelius required state agencies controlled by the governor to prevent harassment against LGBT employees. It affected 25,000 of the state's 41,000 employees when it was signed.
"We were out of date and out of step," Sebelius said in 2007.
Doug Bonney, legal director of the ACLU of Kansas, said efforts to prevent employment discrimination historically have been advanced by executive branch unilateral action, followed by the legislature passing a law. Bonney noted that Presidents Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy both issued executive orders to prevent discrimination.
"When an executive repeals that kind of order, it sends a terrible, terrible sign that we don't care about this -- these people are not deserving of protections, we're going to go backwards," Bonney told The Huffington Post. "That's against the flow of history, frankly." He added that passing an anti-discrimination law in the Republican-controlled Kansas legislature would be a "Herculean task."
The Human Rights Campaign called Brownback's move a "dramatic reversal" in Kansas, where same-sex marriage is legal.
Source
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3eM8z6k.png)
