US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2272

On September 07 2015 18:24 MattBarry wrote:

I agree that all Americans should be fluent in English but it's certainly within the rights of Hispanics to live in spanish speaking communities. Let's not forget we annexed a significant amount of Hispanics and some of those spanish speaking communities survive even now. I mean shit, I'd be pissed if the national narrative started focusing on my home of Louisiana and people started telling us to stop having French speaking communities.

President Barack Obama plans to sign an executive order on Labor Day requiring that federal contractors provide their employees with paid sick leave, the latest in a string of executive actions aimed at raising the bar in the U.S. workplace.

According to the White House, the order will give roughly 300,000 workers under federal contracts up to seven paid sick days per year. Workers will earn one hour of leave for every 30 hours worked. The rules will start with new federal contracts signed starting in 2017.

"Many parents are forced to choose between taking an unpaid day off work -- losing much needed income and potentially threatening their jobs -- and sending a sick child who should be home in bed to school," the White House said in a statement.

Although most U.S. workers do receive paid sick days through their jobs, roughly 39 percent of private-sector workers do not, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The workers who don't have paid sick leave are disproportionately employed in low-wage industries like restaurants and retail.

The White House has named expanding paid leave as one of its top priorities. After the president highlighted the issue in his State of the Union address in January, The Huffington Post pointed out that if the president wanted to bring paid leave to more workers, the easiest way to do so would be to issue an executive order like the one slated to be signed Monday. Last month, The New York Times reported that a draft of an executive order related to sick leave was circulating at the Labor Department.

The executive branch has a long history of using its contracting power to influence labor policy in the private sector, stretching back at least to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Obama administration has grown aggressive with the tactic over the past two years. It issued an executive order setting a minimum wage of $10.10 under federal contracts, and another that effectively strips federal contracts from firms found to have committed wage theft.

In announcing the executive order, the White House also called on lawmakers on Capitol Hill to pass legislation guaranteeing sick days for workers. Unlike most developed nations, the U.S. does not have a law requiring businesses to offer employees paid sick leave. Democrats have sponsored sick-leave legislation but it has gone nowhere in the Republican-controlled Congress.

On September 07 2015 22:56 Gorsameth wrote:
Ahhh did the Supreme Court hurt the poor Judge's feelings?

Is it wrong for me to think that a Judge should not act like a spoiled 8 year old?

The earnings gap between black and non-black workers is smaller among union members than among members of the labor force as a whole, according to a report issued Friday from the City University of New York’s Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies.

The report found that unionized black workers make a median $21.62 per hour, roughly 10 percent less than unionized non-black workers’ $24.04 hourly wage. Non-union black workers earned a median $13.65 per hour to non-union, non-black workers’ $17.00, amounting to a nearly 20 percent pay disadvantage.

A similar study issued late last month by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that unionization also narrows the pay gap between men and women, such that unionized women earn 88.7 percent of their male, unionized counterparts. Among workers as a whole — union and non-union — women earn 78 percent of what men take home, on average.

Together the two studies suggest that raising the rate of unionization would help correct some of the most persistent forms of pay discrimination in the American economy.

CUNY sociologist Ruth Milkman, who co-authored the Murphy Institute report, said wage differentials in a unionized workplace tend to be lower across the board.

“Unions tend to negotiate both a higher floor and a lower ceiling in terms of wages, so that’s the main thing,” Milkman said.

An April Pew survey found African-Americans tend to hold a more favorable view of labor unions than other Americans. Sixty percent of black respondents reported feeling positively toward unions, as opposed to 45 percent of white respondents and 48 percent of the population overall.

Women and men in that survey held roughly the same views: Forty-seven percent of women were pro-union, as opposed to 48 percent of men.

On September 07 2015 18:44 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


I don't think anyone is surprised at the stuff she says anymore lol

On September 07 2015 18:44 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


I don't think anyone is surprised at the stuff she says anymore lol

On September 08 2015 03:07 Yoav wrote:


No one is shocked when Trump/Palin say stupid/racist/misogynistic stuff anymore, just as Hillary Clinton's never-ending scandals no longer fail to shock us. We get it; Trump is an asshole, and Clinton is corrupt. Inshallah they don't win their respective primaries so we get to vote for someone who is neither.

Personally I'm hoping for Kasich v. Sanders. That would be a legitimately cool debate.

On September 08 2015 03:13 cLutZ wrote:

No debate with Kasich could be legitimately cool. His only response to substantive questions is an appeal to God.

Top Republican lawmakers are planning a wide-ranging offensive — including outreach to foreign officials by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office — to undermine President Barack Obama's hopes of reaching an international climate change agreement that would cement his environmental legacy.

The GOP strategy, emerging after months of quiet discussions, includes sowing doubts about Obama's climate policies at home and abroad, trying to block key environmental regulations in Congress, and challenging the legitimacy of the president's attempts to craft a global agreement without submitting a treaty to the Senate.

A top policy aide to McConnell (R-Ky.) has had conversations with a select group of representatives from foreign embassies to make it clear that Republicans intend to fight Obama's climate agenda at every turn, sources familiar with the efforts say.

Sources say the aide, Neil Chatterjee, hasn't tried to persuade other countries to oppose a climate deal, though he is informing them about the GOP's options for undercutting it. He has had conversations with officials representing both developed and developing countries. Environment & Energy Publishing first reported on his efforts.

McConnell himself warned foreign leaders last spring to "proceed with caution before entering into a binding, unattainable deal” with Obama, noting that "two-thirds of the U.S. federal government" — Congress and the Supreme Court — hasn't signed off on the president's plans.

Republicans have no direct way of interfering with December's climate summit in Paris, and Obama's domestic climate strategy relies almost entirely on executive branch regulations that don't require Congress' approval. But the resistance could threaten to gum up progress in carrying out Obama's policies, making it easier to undo them if the GOP retakes the White House in 2016.

The Republican tactics are partly aimed at an audience abroad: countries that have long expressed doubts about the sincerity of the United States' climate efforts.

On September 07 2015 22:46 heliusx wrote:

They've already killed that over 60 years ago. My grandparents and their classmates would get hit over the knuckles with a ruler if they spoke French in school.