EXCLUSIVE: Shareholders Call On Companies To Disclose ALEC Ties

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) faces a run on its membership as Kraft, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Intuit, the Gates Foundation and, as of yesterday, McDonald’s broke ties with the conservative organization. While some companies are refusing to distance themselves from ALEC’s involvement in Voter ID legislation and support for the “stand your ground” laws that may play a pivotal role in the defense of Trayvon Martin’s shooter, newly released SEC documents show that shareholders are increasingly uncomfortable with their companies’ involvement in the conservative organization.

Newly filed SEC documents show that shareholders at five publicly traded companies are launching their own resolutions, to be voted on at upcoming annual meetings in May, calling on the companies to disclose their contributions to tax-exempt organizations, like ALEC, that write and endorse model legislation.

At the UPS annual meeting on May 3, in Wilmington, DE, shareholders will vote on a proposal calling on the board to “authorize the preparation of a report, updated annually” disclosing the companies legislative and lobbying activities. A supporting statement reads:

Read More:

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/04/11/462282/exclusive-shareholders-call-on-companies-to-disclose-alec-ties/

Brazil wants Rio+20 meet to impose sustainable development

Brazil wants the upcoming Rio summit on sustainable development to impose the concept as a development model for the world, one of the organizers said Tuesday.

"We are at a time when crises are multiplying, political crisis, environmental crisis," Ambassador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo told foreign correspondents here. "Rio+20 will provide an opportunity to review those crises triggered by the current development model."

The Rio+20 summit scheduled for June 20-22, the fourth major summit on sustainable development since 1972, is to take up a broad range of issues on the health of the world, including growth, food security, access to water, lifestyles, energy, biodiversity and climate.

Figueiredo said the gathering "will be a success if it adopts clear (sustainable development) goals" for the next 20 years which can balance economic growth, poverty eradication and protection of the environment.

Asked about the lack of sanctions in case of non-compliance with the goals set, he replied: "When one sets development targets for the millennium, one does not think in terms of sanctions."

Read More:

http://www.seeddaily.com/reports/Brazil_wants_Rio+20_meet_to_impose_sustainable_development_999.html

Mike Whitney - An Economic Quagmire

A poor jobs report, higher than expected inflation in China, and another flare-up in the Eurozone sent stocks tumbling on Monday. US Treasuries rallied on news from the Labor Department that employers added just 120,000 non-farm payrolls in March, far below analysts most pessimistic predictions. The Dow Jones lost 130 points on the day, while 10-year Treasury yields slipped to Depression era levels of 2.03 percent. After three-and-a-half years of zero rates, $2.3 trillion in quantitative easing, and $4.4 trillion in additional bond sales (USTs),  a “sustainable” recovery is still nowhere in sight.

Friday’s BLS report was not entirely unexpected. TrimTabs analyst Madeline Schnapp explains what’s behind the sudden drop in new jobs from 200,000 per month (for 3 months) to just 120,000 on Friday:

“For months now we have been harping on the fact that the reason behind the big BLS job numbers in January and February was huge seasonal adjustments. Seasonal adjustments in January were nearly 2.2 million jobs, almost ten times the BLS January employment estimate and in February, the seasonal adjustment was 1.5 million jobs, more than six times the BLS February estimate. So now we come to March and the BLS seasonal adjustment is nearly half the February adjustment, actually 811,000 to be precise, and lo-and-behold the BLS employment estimate has come down out of the stratosphere to a more reasonable 120,000.” (“Jobs Grow 172K Monthly January through March”, TrimTabs)

Read More:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/10/an-economic-quagmire/

Jack Lindstrom - Stay focused on the target: a lesson learned from "Shut Down the Corporations"

 An incident with a truck driver stopped by our F29 action made me realize that during the May 1^st General Strike and any other actions, we must let workers of non-targeted companies do their job and get paid--for both strategic and moral reasons.

During the "Shut Down the Corporations" F29 action near Riverside, CA, Occupiers completely blocked the intersection leading into Schneider Logistics, a Walmart distribution center, to prevent trucks from going in or out.

I and a girl I'd been talking to, Bethany, went over to the driver of one such stopped truck--a diminutive Latino guy, maybe about 40 years old, with striking, dark-lined eyes (I feel the need to describe him because when I hear "truck driver," the image that comes to mind is a 300-lbs white dude)--who had come out of the cab to reason with us. We filled him in on why we were there and showed him a couple pieces of propaganda. He insisted that he worked for a company called Ferguson, not Schneider Logistics. His plain truck--unemblazoned with any logo, unlike the Walmart trucks a block over--seemed to confirm that. Nevertheless, our goal was to "Shut Down the Corporations"--not just Walmart, even though that was our target. I looked up Ferguson on my iPhone and found that it was a major plumbing supply company.

Read More:

http://my.firedoglake.com/jacklindstrom/2012/03/12/stay-focused-on-the-target-a-lesson-learned-from-the-%E2%80%9Cshut-down-the-corporations%E2%80%9D-action/

Paul Craig Roberts - No Jobs For Americans

March 9, 2012 the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that 227,000 new non-farm payroll jobs were created by the economy during February. Is the government's claim true?

No. Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reports that 44,000 of these jobs or 19% consist of an add-on factor derived from the BLS's estimate that 44,000 more unreported jobs from new business start-ups were created than were lost by unreported business failures. The BLS's estimate comes from the bureau's "birth-death model," which works better during normal times, but delivers erroneous results during troubled times such as the economy has been experiencing during the past four years.

Taking out the 44,000 added-on jobs reduces the February jobs number to 183,000, but does not provide a full correction. In an economy as troubled as the US economy is, most likely the deaths exceeded the births, but we don't know what the number is. Was it 20,000? 50,000? What number do we deduct from the 183,000? We simply do not know.

Read More:

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/03/10/no-jobs-for-americans/

Robert Reich - The Precarious Jobs Recovery

February’s  227,000 net new jobs – the third month in a row of job gains well in excess of 200,000 – is good news for President Obama and bad news for Mitt Romney.

Jobs are coming back fast enough to blunt Republican attacks against Obama on the economy and to rob Romney of the issue he’d prefer to be talking about in his primary battle against social conservatives in the GOP.

But jobs aren’t coming back fast enough to significantly reduce the nation’s backlog of 10 million jobs. That backlog consists of 5.3 million lost during the recession and another 4.7 million that needed to have been added just to keep up with the growth of the working-age population since the recession began.

Read More:

http://robertreich.org/post/19010110577

Video BBC1, Human Planet: Arctic - Race against the tide, risking death under huge blocks of ice

The people of Kangiqsujuaq in Canada go to great lengths to add variety to their diet of seal meat, venturing under the sea ice during the extreme low tides of the spring equinox to gather mussels.

It's a race against time. They have less than half an hour to search these temporary caverns before the tide rushes back in. A look-out keeps watch for the returning tide, but warning shouts can't be too loud in case the echoes bring down the ice.

Learn and read more:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/humanplanet 

Dave Lindorff - Unemployment Mumbo Jumbo

The US stock market jumped up today on word that the number of new unemployment applications fell to the lowest level in four years.

Sounds good, right? It’s meant to sound good, but if you look at the number, and if you think about what it really means, it’s not good news at all.

What the US Labor Department reported was that new unemployment claims filed for the week ended Feb. 24 totaled 351,000, which was slightly lower than the 353,000 new claims filed the prior week. “Slightly indeed! a better term for this 0.57% decline is “statistically insignificant! 

The idea that such a “drop” in new claims would spark a jump in the Dow or the S&P shows how completely divorced from reality investors really are.

Read More:

HTTP://WWW.COUNTERPUNCH.ORG/2012/03/02/UNEMPLOYMENT-MUMBO-JUMBO/

Steven Wishnia - The Truth About Drug-Testing the Unemployed

The new federal law that lets states drug-test applicants for unemployment compensation was a small win for the Republican-led efforts to examine the urine of everyone receiving government safety-net benefits. How many people it will affect depends on how the Department of Labor establishes the regulations—and on whether the courts continue to hold that such policies violate the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable searches.

House Republicans initially wanted to let states drug-test all 7.5 million people collecting unemployment compensation. The compromise reached in the payroll tax-cut deal, along with cutting six months off the time people can collect, authorizes states to test applicants for benefits in two circumstances: if they were fired for using drugs, or if the only occupation they’re suited for is one the Department of Labor lists as commonly requiring drug-testing.

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/154364/the_truth_about_drug-testing_the_unemployed

Michelle Chen - Student Labor Scandal Illuminates the Gray Market for Guestworkers

The students came for a summer learning experience with a job at a classic American company. Instead, they got a crash course in the realities of the global economy.

Following months of campaigning, young foreign students who have waged a bitter labor battle against a U.S. candy giant, the Department of Labor has cited two subcontractors that helped import the students into the Hershey plant in Palmyra, Pennsylvania, where they were reportedly subjected to coercive, exploitative conditions. Though Hershey itself wasn't targeted, subcontractors involved in the work program, Exel Incorporated and SHS Group, were charged with several occupational safety violations, including failure to provide adequate safety-training and a repeated failure to record injuries and illnesses.

Though the citations include various fines, they didn't really address the core of the shadowy labor supply chain that entangled several hundred students from China, Nigeria, and other countries. According to workers' testimonies, they came for an “educational” work experience under the J-1 visa program and ended up stuck on an assembly line packing candies for obscenely low wages. The recruits eventually revolted and launched a high-profile campaign with the National Guestworker Alliance and other advocacy groups.

Read More:

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12827/student_labor_scandal_illuminates_the_gray_market_for_guestworkers/