Monday, February 18, 2013

Today's Teamster News 02.18.13

Congressional staffers often travel on tabs of foreign governments  Washington Post   ...Hill staffers had reported taking 803 such trips in the six years ending in 2011. Lawmakers themselves are increasingly participating, disclosing 21 trips in 2011, more than double the figure in prior years...
Green groups rally on climate, urge Obama to reject Keystone project  The Hill   ...Organizers said 35,000 activists attended the rally, where speakers portrayed the battle over the pipeline as a struggle between grassroots green groups and deep-pocketed special interests...
Federal Reserve: Weak demand -- not taxes -- preventing job growth  Bold Progressive   ...Using survey data from the National Federation of Independent Business, the two researchers found that when businesses complained most of lack of sales and demand, unemployment was highest...
How HSBC hooked up with drug traffickers and terrorists. And got away with it  Rolling Stone   ...For at least half a decade, the storied British colonial banking power helped to wash hundreds of millions of dollars for drug mobs, including Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, suspected in tens of thousands of murders just in the past 10 years... The bank also moved money for organizations linked to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and for Russian gangsters; helped countries like Iran, the Sudan and North Korea evade sanctions; and, in between helping murderers and terrorists and rogue states, aided countless common tax cheats in hiding their cash...
Senator Orrin Hatch Drops a Bombshell at Jack Lew’s Confirmation Hearing  Wall Street On Parade   ... One only gets a $940,000 bonus from Wall Street’s Citigroup if you can land a “full time high level position with the United States Government or a regulatory body.”...
Thousands rally against Portugal austerity  AFP   ...Under the weight of cutbacks in public spending, the unemployment rate rose sharply in the fourth quarter of last year to 16.9 percent while the economy contracted by 3.2 percent in 2012...
Thousands protest to end evictions in Spain  AFP   ...protests were called in Barcelona and 50 other Spanish cities, the latest of months of demonstrations driven by anger at Spain's recession and the conservative government, which is imposing austere economic reforms...
SC Gov. Nikki Haley Named As Other Woman In Divorce Case  Crooks and Liars   ...According to court documents obtained exclusively by FITS, Jennifer Marchant – wife of prominent S.C. State House lobbyist Larry Marchant – is suing her husband for divorce on the grounds of infidelity. One of the three women Marchant accuses her husband of cheating on her with? You guessed it … Haley...
Bill would make it illegal to videotape farm or industry conditions  Indianapolis Star   ...“We don’t need vigilantes out entering people’s private property, industrial operation, factory or farm, doing things surreptitiously... for no other reason than to annoy and harass,” said Sen. Travis Holdman...
New state law conceals records of abuse, neglect in nursing homes  The Cap Times   ...It also makes such records inadmissible in criminal cases against health care providers accused of neglecting or abusing patients. The changes were included in a tort reform measure, the first bill Gov. Scott Walker proposed...