The USA Oligarchy-Austerity-Schadenfreude Thread

[justdrew]

go! go! go! america!

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/internet/cops-maple-syrup-not-cause-dennys-brawl

[82_28]

[82_28]

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... .DTL&tsp=1

'1-strike' pot-test rule for job hopefuls OKd

(03-02) 16:06 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- An employer can refuse to hire someone who has ever tested positive for marijuana or other drugs, even if the applicant is now clean and sober, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the "one-strike" rule of the Pacific Maritime Association, which controls hiring in the West Coast longshore industry, doesn't discriminate against rehabilitated addicts in violation of disability laws.

The rule "imposes a harsh penalty on applicants who test positive," and may seem unreasonable because many drug and alcohol users recover, the court said. But it said the maritime association had adopted the rule for safety purposes and did not single out former addicts.

A lawyer for a man who lost a chance for a longshore job because he had tested positive for marijuana seven years earlier said she knows of no other employer, including law enforcement and the armed services, that permanently bars applicants because of a single positive drug test.

"This is a very draconian view that impacts potentially thousands of people," said the attorney, Andrea Cook. She said it also contradicts "public policy that says we want to encourage people to get better."

The maritime association's lawyer was unavailable for comment.

Cook's client, Santiago Lopez, was turned down for a longshore job at the Long Beach port in 1997 after he failed a drug test. He underwent treatment and applied again in 2004, but the association refused to consider him because of the earlier test.

His lawsuit relied on federal and state laws that protect rehabilitated addicts from discrimination. But the appeals court, upholding a federal judge's dismissal of the suit, said the association doesn't bar all recovered addicts, only those who were still using drugs when they first applied for a job.

The association adopted the one-strike rule, without objection from the longshore workers' union, because of accidents and injuries that employers partly blamed on "a culture that accepted the use of drugs and alcohol in the workplace," Judge Susan Graber wrote in the appeals court's majority opinion.

Lopez could not show that the rule had a disproportionate effect on recovered addicts, Graber said, because he had no evidence of anyone else in that category who had been turned down. Dissenting Judge Harry Pregerson said the court was imposing an unfair burden because employers and recovery organizations keep that information private.

Cook said Lopez, now 36, has graduated from college, is raising a family and is employed, though for less pay than the coveted longshore jobs. She said he may appeal the ruling.

The ruling can be viewed at links.sfgate.com/ZKWX.

[DevilYouKnow]

The overall effect of recent erosions is illustrated by the fact that 60 ships were commonly underway in America's seaward approaches in 1998, but today—despite opportunities for the infiltration of terrorists, the potential of weapons of mass destruction, and the ability of rogue nations to sea-launch intermediate and short-range ballistic missiles—there are only 20.

As China's navy rises and ours declines, not that far in the future the trajectories will cross. Rather than face this, we seduce ourselves with redefinitions such as the vogue concept that we can block with relative ease the straits through which the strategic materials upon which China depends must transit. But in one blink this would move us from the canonical British/American control of the sea to the insurgent model of lesser navies such as Germany's in World Wars I and II and the Soviet Union's in the Cold War. If we cast ourselves as insurgents, China will be driven even faster to construct a navy that can dominate the oceans, a complete reversal of fortune.

The United Sates Navy need not follow the Royal Navy into near oblivion. We have five times the population and almost six times the GDP of the U.K., and unlike Britain we were not exhausted by the great wars and their debt [HAHAHAHAHAHAHA], and we neither depended upon an empire for our sway nor did we lose one [HAHAHAHAHA].

Despite its necessity, deficit reduction is not the only or even the most important thing. Abdicating our more than half-century stabilizing role on the oceans, neglecting the military balance, and relinquishing a position we are fully capable of holding will bring tectonic realignments among nations—and ultimately more expense, bloodletting, and heartbreak than the most furious deficit hawk is capable of imagining. A technological nation with a GDP of $14 trillion can afford to build a fleet worthy of its past and sufficient to its future. Pity it if it does not.

Mr. Helprin, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, is the author of, among other works, "Winter's Tale" (Harcourt), "A Soldier of the Great War" (Harcourt) and, most recently, "Digital Barbarism" (HarperCollins).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704150604576166362512952294.html?mod=e2fb

[82_28]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/02/BALI1I2HEN.DTL&tsp=1

'1-strike' pot-test rule for job hopefuls OKd

Ah, I see, technofascism in through democracy's out door. Good one. The government is nothing more than a misery inducing, revenue generating media mechanism anymore. There are some who are determined to deliver the product of what once went by "fascism" in the olden days into these days of UFOs, Hope, Change and Revolution and make it look like something different.

Pele, you should make this an OP, thus it may get commented on further than in an old thread.

[Pele'sDaughter]

Almost did that, so now I will.

[Bruce Dazzling]

Speechless.

Orange County: Pack of Snarling Imbeciles Released from Their Kennels, Given American Flags
March 4th, 2011

To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

—They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

—Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

[barracuda]

Thanks for that Bruce. Courtesy of Dangerous Minds...

You can reach Congressman Ed Royce here:

1110 E. Chapman Ave, Suite 207
Orange, CA 92866
T (714) 744-4130 F (714) 744-4056

2185 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
T (202) 225-4111 F (202) 226-03

Councilwoman Deborah Pauly can be reached here:

Twitter account:
@YnotDebPauly

Email address:
dpauly@villapark.org

Facebook profile:
http://www.facebook.com/deborah.pauly

Representative Gerry Miller can be reached at:

2349 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Phone: 202-225-3201
Fax: 202-226-6962

1800 E. Lambert Road
Suite 150
Brea, CA 92821

Phone: 714-257-1142
Fax: 714-257-9242

200 Civic Center
Mission Viejo, CA 92691

Phone: 949-470-8484

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/n ... ugs25.html

Prescription-drug use an issue for employers

LAWRENCEBURG, Tenn. — The news, delivered by phone, left Sue Bates aghast: She was losing her job of 22 years after testing positive for a legally prescribed drug.

Dura Automotive Systems had changed the policy at its plant to test for certain prescription drugs as well as illicit ones. The medication that Bates was taking for back pain — hydrocodone, a narcotic prescribed by her doctor — was among many the auto-parts company suddenly had deemed unsafe.

"I don't think it should end the way it did," said Bates, an assembly-line worker who has sued Dura for discrimination and invasion of privacy. "You tell somebody you lost your job because you're on prescription medication and they're like, 'Yeah, right.' "

Two decades after the Supreme Court first upheld the right to test for drugs in the workplace, Dura's concern — that employees on certain medications posed a safety hazard — is echoing across the country. Americans' growing reliance on drugs for pain, anxiety and other maladies suggests many are reporting to work with potent drugs in their systems, and employers are grappling for ways to address that.

What companies consider a pursuit of a safe workplace is drawing complaints from employees who cite privacy concerns and contend they should not be fired for taking legal medications, sometimes for injuries suffered on the job.

"This may be the point guard for an important societal issue," Dr. Robert Cochran Jr., a Nashville pain specialist who treats three of the Dura plaintiffs, said of the lawsuit against Dura. "How do we address these drugs as a society?"

There is little independent data regarding prescription-drug impairment in the workplace. But Quest Diagnostics, a provider of workplace drug tests, said the rate of employees testing positive for prescription opiates increased by more than 40 percent between 2005 and 2009, and by 18 percent last year. The data, culled from more than 500,000 drug tests, also indicated workers tested for drugs after accidents were four times more likely to have opiates in their systems than those tested before being hired.

"It's not nearly on employer radar screens as much as it should be," said Mark de Bernardo, executive director of the Institute for a Drug-Free Workplace, a nonprofit business coalition. "Given the liability for industrial accidents or product defects or workplace injuries involving prescription-drug abuse, employers cannot afford not to address this issue."

Nor is the problem limited to Dura's plant. In Texas, a prominent prosecutor resigned in 2008 after a scandal for which he blamed impaired judgment because of prescription drugs. And in Missouri, a patient sued alleging a doctor had torn a hole in his colon during a 2006 colonoscopy while taking the painkiller oxycodone.

Dr. Carl Rollyn Sullivan, director of addictions programs at the West Virginia University School of Medicine, said he had treated "a lot of miners telling me the ridiculous amount of drugs they're doing underground," most of them legally prescribed.

Employer challenges

Setting prescription-drug rules in the workplace is tricky, not least because it is difficult to prove impairment. Dura considered a drug unsafe if its label included a warning against driving or operating machinery, but doctors say many users function normally.

Also, some employers fear violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The law prohibits asking about prescription drugs unless workers are seen acting in a way that compromises safety or suggests they cannot perform their job for medical reasons, according to lawyers with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

"We're up against 20 years of training on the ADA that essentially suggests, 'Don't ask, don't tell,' " said Steven Bernstein, an employment lawyer in Tampa, Fla.

The only exception is for police officers, firefighters and others in public-safety jobs, said Christopher Kuczynski, assistant legal counsel in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's ADA policy division. They can be required to self-report use of prescription medication if their inability or impaired ability to perform job functions would result in a direct threat, he added.

Even with bus and truck drivers, nuclear-plant workers and others in jobs that the federal government deems "safety sensitive," employers are required to test for only six categories of drugs that do not cover synthetic painkillers such as OxyContin and Vicodin, anti-anxiety drugs such as Xanax, or other controlled prescription drugs.

"It's a very serious hole in the system," said Dr. Robert DuPont, president of the Institute for Behavior and Health.

Donna Bush, a senior forensic toxicologist at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which sets federal drug-testing parameters, said the group is not pushing to add more prescription drugs.

"Which ones do we add?" she asked. "Drug testing for illicit illegal drugs is very easy because presence is an offense."

National efforts

Dura's implementation of the drug tests coincided with its participation in Tennessee's Drug-Free Workplace Program, which provides incentives that include lower workers' compensation insurance premiums.

Many states have a drug-free-workplace program — a concept developed after Congress passed the 1988 law requiring companies with federal contracts to adopt drug policies. But the programs barely have changed and focus heavily on illegal drugs.

Meanwhile, drug-testing laws are complex and vary from state to state. Several prohibit or greatly restrict random testing; many others give employers broad discretion, even providing incentives such as discounts on workers' compensation.

Employers can ask workers in safety-sensitive jobs to self-report potentially dangerous prescription medications, but cannot ensure they do so.

In Washington state, Dr. Michael Schiesser, president of the Washington Society of Addiction Medicine, said he's not aware of laws restricting the manner or scope of drug testing for most employees.

"There are no standard laws covering employment [drug testing] in general," he said. "Basically, an employer can do whatever the heck they want" — barring language in individual or union contracts.

A state law giving drug-free-workplace programs a discount on workers' compensation premiums expired in 2001 after a study found the programs had little effect outside construction, manufacturing and services.

Dr. Gary Franklin, medical director for Washington State Department of Labor & Industries, noted that the study, which he co-authored, was done in the 1990s, before prescription opiate abuse became a significant problem.

Finding a balance

Dr. Barry Sample, director of science and technology for the Employer Solutions business of Quest Diagnostics, said the smartest thing employers can do is come up with a thorough and consistent policy that spells out which drugs their workers might be tested for and under what circumstances.

Supervisors, he said, should be trained to look for "reasonable suspicion" of impairment, necessary under law to warrant testing.

While Dura officials said in court documents that the goal of expanded testing was to protect employees, some plaintiffs claim they were injured on the job and supervisors knew about the medications. Others say they believe the company wanted to get rid of them to save on insurance premiums, a charge the company has denied.

Bates says she understands Dura's safety concerns but believes the company should have worked with employees.

"If the medicine they're taking is not good for them or the workplace," she said, "then there should be some sort of program where they can teach us how that affects you or see if something else can be worked out."

Seattle Times health reporter Carol M. Ostrom contributed to this report.

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://stlactivisthub.blogspot.com/2011 ... souri.html

Is Child Labor Back in Missouri?
Senator Jane Cunningham's proposal to roll back Child Labor Laws in Missouri was widely mocked, both in Missouri and nationally. But after Cunningham dropped her bill under pressure from just about everybody, it seemed like Missouri Republicans had decided to pursue their quest to crush working families using other despicable methods.

Not so fast, though. It turns out the new budget just passed out of the Missouri House actually eliminates all of the people who investigate child labor and minimum wage complaints, effectively defunding any enforcement of the laws.

KMOV has the story:

The cuts would get rid of all the investigators who look into child labor and minimum wage complaints.

Lara Granich, director of Missouri Jobs for Justice has a hard time believing the cuts. "This puts workers terribly at risk of unscrupulous employers,” she says. “If a worker is being denied a fair wage, or children in dangerous condition, there's no one to do anything about them."

[norton ash]

Not sure where to put this one. Hope Pastor Jones' heart is filled with Christian joy today.

UN Workers Killed In Afghan Koran Protest

5:15pm UK, Friday April 01, 2011

UN workers were among 11 people reportedly killed in northern Afghanistan after a Koran burning protest turned violent.
Demonstrators stormed their compound in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, opening fire on guards and setting fires.

They had gathered in a mass protest following reports a pastor had recently set a copy of the Muslim holy book ablaze in Florida.

Police said the dead included three foreign members of the UN, five Nepalese United Nations guards and three Afghan protesters.

A UN spokesman confirmed there had been deaths but did not give details.



Reports said the protests were initially peaceful but turned violent



Other reports said several hundred demonstrators were peacefully protesting against the Koran burning when the violence broke out.

Afghanistan had earlier condemned the "disrespectful and abhorrent" burning of the Koran by evangelical preacher Pastor Wayne Sapp in a Florida church on March 21, calling it an effort to incite tension between religions.

It was carried out under the supervision of Terry Jones, who planned to burn a pile of the holy books last year to mark the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York.

He aborted the move under pressure from world leaders including the US president.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World- ... ng_Protest

[JackRiddler]

On the Afghan riot...

Have you all noticed how Hugo Chavez speaks in Spanish, and is always recorded with transcripts available, so that Spanish-speakers (a common category) can translate what he really said? And yet despite this, the Western corporate media routinely misrepresent things he said, because they know that only 1% of everyone will catch the correction on the Internet somewhere?

Imagine how much worse it must be with Afghanistan, where none of that holds.

In other words: I'm certain that 8 UN guards were just killed by a rioting mob, and that it was, in the big scheme, a very wrong thing and a horrific crime against them. The rest of the story, however, as in what was really said and what the mob thought they were doing, may remain opaque to us.

.

[Bruce Dazzling]

How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs
Ed Vulliamy
Guardian UK/Observer
Sunday 3 April 2011

On 10 April 2006, a DC-9 jet landed in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, on the Gulf of Mexico, as the sun was setting. Mexican soldiers, waiting to intercept it, found 128 cases packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100m. But something else – more important and far-reaching – was discovered in the paper trail behind the purchase of the plane by the Sinaloa narco-trafficking cartel.

During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo.

The authorities uncovered billions of dollars in wire transfers, traveller's cheques and cash shipments through Mexican exchanges into Wachovia accounts. Wachovia was put under immediate investigation for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme. Of special significance was that the period concerned began in 2004, which coincided with the first escalation of violence along the US-Mexico border that ignited the current drugs war.

Criminal proceedings were brought against Wachovia, though not against any individual, but the case never came to court. In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami. Now that the year's "deferred prosecution" has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear. It paid federal authorities $110m in forfeiture, for allowing transactions later proved to be connected to drug smuggling, and incurred a $50m fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine.

More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn – a sum equivalent to one-third of Mexico's gross national product – into dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio (CDCs) in Mexico, currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.

"Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations," said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor. Yet the total fine was less than 2% of the bank's $12.3bn profit for 2009. On 24 March 2010, Wells Fargo stock traded at $30.86 – up 1% on the week of the court settlement.

The conclusion to the case was only the tip of an iceberg, demonstrating the role of the "legal" banking sector in swilling hundreds of billions of dollars – the blood money from the murderous drug trade in Mexico and other places in the world – around their global operations, now bailed out by the taxpayer.

At the height of the 2008 banking crisis, Antonio Maria Costa, then head of the United Nations office on drugs and crime, said he had evidence to suggest the proceeds from drugs and crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to banks on the brink of collapse. "Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade," he said. "There were signs that some banks were rescued that way."

Wachovia was acquired by Wells Fargo during the 2008 crash, just as Wells Fargo became a beneficiary of $25bn in taxpayers' money. Wachovia's prosecutors were clear, however, that there was no suggestion Wells Fargo had behaved improperly; it had co-operated fully with the investigation. Mexico is the US's third largest international trading partner and Wachovia was understandably interested in this volume of legitimate trade.

José Luis Marmolejo, who prosecuted those running one of the casas de cambio at the Mexican end, said: "Wachovia handled all the transfers. They never reported any as suspicious."

link.

[MacCruiskeen]

(Not sure if this is the right thread. Maybe it should be in "Quotes Only".)

BBC, 5 April 2011 Last updated at 09:55 GMT

Gauguin painting in Washington DC attacked by woman

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12966698

A woman who attacked a painting by Paul Gauguin hanging in the National Gallery in Washington DC said the French artist was "evil", court records show.

Susan Burns pounded Two Tahitian Women and tried to rip it from a gallery wall on Friday, officials said.

The 1899 painting, which depicts two women's bare breasts, was behind a plastic cover and was unharmed.

She was charged with attempted theft and destruction of property and is being held pending a mental evaluation.

On Friday afternoon the accused slammed her hands against the plexiglass cover between the canvas and the frame.

'Beautiful, mysterious women'

A museum security officer intervened and detained her.

Ms Burns, 53, from Virginia, told police she thought the painting should be burned, according to court records viewed by the Associated Press news agency.

"I feel that Gauguin is evil," she was quoted as telling police.

"He has nudity and is bad for the children. He has two women in the painting and it's very homosexual."

[...]



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12966698