Category: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

They never, ever, ever give up

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Here’s a “hit head on desk” moment for you!

While their Senate colleagues were engaged in a fiery debate over the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline, the House on Tuesday quietly passed a bill that environmentalists say would hamper the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to use the best scientific information when crafting regulations to protect public health and the environment.

The House voted 229-191 to pass H.R. 1422, which would change the rules for appointing members to the Science Advisory Board (SAB), a group that gives scientific advice to the EPA Administrator. Also called the Science Advisory Board Reform Act, the bill would make it easier for scientists with financial ties to corporations to serve on the SAB, prohibit independent scientists from talking about their own research on the board, and make it more difficult for scientists who have applied for grants from the EPA to join the board.

Yet another episode

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

SAN ONOFRE NUCLEAR POWER PLANT UNIT 3 042

Of why private industry shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near nuclear power plants:

…workers packaging the waste came across a batch that was extraordinarily acidic, making it unsafe for shipping. The lab’s guidelines called for work to shut down while the batch underwent a rigid set of reviews to determine how to treat it, a time-consuming process that jeopardized the lab’s goal of meeting the deadline.

Instead, the lab and its various contractors took shortcuts in treating the acidic nuclear waste, adding neutralizer and a wheat-based organic kitty litter to absorb excess liquid. The combination turned the waste into a potential bomb that one lab chemist later characterized as akin to plastic explosives, according to a six-month investigation by The New Mexican.

So the wingnuts have taken over in PA

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Election Night Party in York

And of course insanity will soon ensue! I wish I’d hit the lottery. I would never read the news again:

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – The Pennsylvania Legislature will be led by massive Republican majorities – including the biggest House GOP majority in more than 50 years – when Democratic Gov.-elect Tom Wolf takes office on Jan. 20.

But for two weeks before he takes office, those majorities will be sworn in and intact under outgoing Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, a fact that has not been lost on Republican Party backers.

That means it is still legal and possible – albeit technically challenging – to enact far-reaching legislation favored by many Republicans that Corbett might sign, but that Wolf had said during the campaign that he would oppose.

People who have looked into it could not find a precedent for such a move in modern Pennsylvania political history, but that does not mean it cannot be done.

Just another example

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Of why the private sector shouldn’t be anywhere near anything as important as nuclear power. Because if they’ll cut corners on the financing, they’ll do it on safety, too:

A federal grand jury has indicted two former executives of a company that hoped to build a nuclear power plant in southwestern Idaho.

Donald L. Gillispie, 71, and 40-year-old Jennifer R. Ransom were indicted Thursday on 14 counts of conspiracy, securities fraud, wire fraud, filing false tax returns and making false statements to federal agents.

The two, both from Meridian, were executives of the Eagle-based Alternate Energy Holdings Inc. Prosecutors say the pair conspired to manipulate and inflate the price of their company’s stock in an effort to attract investors and gain cash financing for the company, and that they didn’t properly report income to the IRS.

[…] Alternate Energy Holdings had proposed building a $10 billion nuclear power-generating plant in Payette County in 2009. That plan came to a halt in 2010, when the federal Securities and Exchange Commission suspended free trading of the company’s stock. The SEC said the company was promoting itself with a deluge of press releases that presented false information, which forced the federal agency to take action.

Now convict the bastard

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

donblankenship

They say the arc of the universe bends toward justice, and I’m glad the universe finally got around to indicting Don Blankenship:

Don Blankenship, the longtime chief executive of Massey Energy, was indicted today on charges that he violated federal mine safety laws at the company’s Upper Big Branch Mine prior to an April 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners.

U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin this afternoon informed representatives of the families of the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster victims that a four-count indictment had been handed up by a federal grand jury charging Blankenship.

The indictment alleges that Blankenship conspired to cause routine, willful violations of mandatory federal mine safety and health standards at Upper Big Branch during a period from Jan. 1, 2008, to April 9, 2010, according to a notice Goodwin’s office sent to the families.

The notice also said that the indictment alleges Blankenship was part of a conspiracy to cover up mine safety violations and hinder federal enforcement efforts by providing advance warning of government inspections. The indictment also alleges that, after the explosion, Blankenship made false statements to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission about Massey’s safety practices prior to the explosion, the notice to families says.

The indictment comes after a more than four-year investigation by Goodwin that began following the mine disaster on April 5, 2010, but expanded to examine a troubled safety record that critics have long argued put coal production and profits ahead of worker protections.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Ruby has led an unprecedented government effort to link major safety lapses at Upper Big Branch and other Massey mines up the corporate ladder to Blankenship, who was known for keeping a firm grip on every aspect of Massey’s operations during nearly two decades at the company’s helm.

Blankenship has previously denied any wrongdoing, insisted that Massey put the safety of its miners first, and promoted his theory that the Upper Big Branch explosion was fueled by an uncontrollable flood of natural gas that inundated the Raleigh County mine.

“If they put me behind bars … it will be political,” Blankenship wrote in a May 2013 article posted on a blog he has used to defend his record and attack his critics.

Two government and two independent investigations, though, blamed the Upper Big Branch deaths on a pattern by Massey Energy of violating federal standards concerning mine ventilation and the control of highly explosive coal dust, both of which set the stage for a small methane ignition to turn into a huge coal-dust-fueled explosion.
Continue reading “Now convict the bastard” →

Help, help, I’m being repressed

~ susie

It is my deep religious conviction that state Sen. Donna Campbell is a witch, and must not be suffered to live. Amen!

Texas businesses would be allowed to fire LGBT employees and turn away LGBT customers under a new proposal issued Monday by state Sen. Donna Campbell (R).
Campbell’s proposal would strengthen existing protections in Texas for the “right to act or refuse to act in a manner motivated by a sincerely held religious belief,” a legal maneuver that critics have described as a “license to discriminate.” This year, many state legislatures have considered putting the religious rights of business owners over the civil rights of would-be customers. Similar proposals in Kansas, North Carolina, South Dakota, Arizona, and Oregon ultimately failed this year, while a number of other states have held that the law protects LGBT folks from discrimination even if that discrimination is based in scripture.
Mississippi signed a license to discriminate into law, and Kentucky lawmakers overrode the governor’s veto to put their own religious freedom law into effect. In Pennsylvania, lawmakers who are trying to extend non-discrimination protections to LGBT couples have so far been stymied.

These laws have come into vogue after numerous anti-LGBT small business owners have refused service to LGBT clients in Kentucky, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, New Mexico, Iowa, Colorado, and other states in recent years. Many of these disputes involve bakeries and other vendors who refuse to contract for services at same-sex weddings, but some businesses have refused to print Pride t-shirts or put rainbow frosting on an order of cookies.

Conservative political forces have leaped to these companies’ aid, arguing that their religious convictions about sexuality trump everyone else’s civil rights against discrimination. Those calls grew louder after this summer’s Supreme Court decision that a retailer called Hobby Lobby did not have to provide health insurance that covers birth control due to the company’s religious views, a ruling that reversed decades of precedent whereby legal protections tied to religious faith were limited to actions that did not impede other people’s rights.

Sen. Campbell’s new proposal in Texas is her second bite at the license-to-discriminate apple. Her first, in 2013, didn’t go very well. Critics pointed out that by amending the state constitution as she proposes, lawmakers would empower Westboro Baptist Church protesters to attend military funerals rather than protesting them from afar. One commentator applauded Campbell’s intentions but warned that the way her proposal was written might some day allow a person to claim a sincere religious belief in the right to an abortion, effectively legalizing abortion in Texas.

Very bad trade

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Louisiana Runoff 2014

What’s left of the environment for Mary Landrieu?

Legislation to approve the Keystone XL pipeline cleared a procedural hurdle in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, setting up a vote on the project next week.

Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, who faces a runoff vote in Louisiana on Dec. 6, had pushed for vote on Thursday on the bill.

Her Republican opponent, U.S. Representative Bill Cassidy, pushed for a vote on a similar bill his chamber, as each competed to support TransCanada Corp’s pipeline that would send some 800,000 barrels per day of Canadian oil sand petroleum to refineries in Texas.

The non-competing janitor

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Vibrations

First of all, I’m still shocked. When I was a recruiter, we knew judges routinely threw out non-competes for anyone who wasn’t a strategic employee — because a non-compete for a low-level employee was considered coercive and an improper restraint of employment. So I can’t believe that so many judges are now actually holding people to these. Given my druthers, I’d turn down a job from any place that made me sign one. But we don’t always have a choice, do we?

So I’ll share a little tip with you about what I’d do whenever I was given a non-compete. (Because I’m kind of anti-authoritarian that way!) I’d tell the HR person I misplaced the paperwork, and then I would hand it in a day later — unsigned. No one ever noticed. Via Danny Westneat at the Seattle Times:

To get the $15-an-hour job last spring, Almeida was required to sign a “restriction on competition” clause that said if he leaves, he can’t work for two years for any firm doing similar work in ServiceMaster’s “geographic area” — which the company’s lawyer told me means King, Snohomish, Island, Yakima and Kittitas counties.

ServiceMaster of Seattle, a franchise in a $3.4 billion national corporation, now is trying to force Almeida to forfeit his $18-an-hour job at Superior Cleaning of Woodinville.

The noncompete clause would mean Almeida also couldn’t work in any water- or fire-damage job, janitorial, office cleaning, window washing, floor or carpet cleaning or other job ServiceMaster does.

“ServiceMaster of Seattle hereby demands that you immediately cease all employ with Superior Cleaning,” reads a “notice of violation” letter the company’s law firm wrote to Almeida (who lives with his aunt in Lynnwood).

“Failure to do so will require (ServiceMaster) to initiate a legal action against you to obtain a court order enjoining you from working for one of (ServiceMaster’s) direct competitors.”

When I got the lawyer who wrote that on the phone, my question was admittedly not very nuanced: “Seriously? You’re going after a $15-an-hour worker over a noncompete clause?”

Brian Boice said employment contracts that restrict workers are common and the issue at this pay grade is training. The company spends “a lot of money and effort on training inexperienced workers, and we don’t want to end up training them for our competitors.” He accused Superior of chronic poaching of ServiceMaster’s workers, Almeida included.

Almeida says in his three months at ServiceMaster he did not get any training. He agrees he signed the noncompete clause, but says he thought it would apply to managers who are high enough to have client lists. Or to people who leave to start competing businesses.

“I’m a helper,” he says. “I come to work and get my orders and follow them. I figured I was way too far down the ladder to matter.”

Lately there is no rung too low. The New York Times reported last summer that a camp counselor and a hair stylist lost jobs due to noncompete clauses. Last month news hit that some Jimmy John’s sandwich outlets used noncompete contracts to stop sandwich makers from defecting to any business “selling submarine, hero-type, deli-style, pita and/or wrapped or rolled sandwiches and which is located within three miles of … any such Jimmy John’s Sandwich Shop.”

It’s hard to conjure what intellectual property or trade secrets are at stake in making the Turkey Tom. Or in wet-vaccing carpets. It’s one thing to make engineers or lawyers sign noncompetes. But cleaners?

“I think this is just taking advantage of blue-collar workers,” said Larry Weinberg, the CEO of Superior Cleaning, who currently employs Almeida. “It’s like we’re going back to the feudal societies of the 12th century, where the vassals are indentured to their corporate lords. We’re still in America, right?”