Teamsters
Teamsters’ opposition to growler sales could stall Sunday booze bill Minnesota Public Radio ...Teamsters Union political director Ed Reynoso said the union started lobbying against Sunday growler sales after he learned a company that distributes alcohol and employs members of the union suggested the law would allow them to reopen their labor contracts because of it...
Keep the Carriage Horses (opinion) New York Times ...Let the carriages and the horses alone. Let this small business survive. Side with the drivers and do not add fleets of new cars, electric or not, into the streets and parks...
Darden gets sued over bylaw changes Orlando Sentinel ...A Teamsters fund that invests in Darden Restaurants stock has sued the company over recent changes to its bylaws. Darden last month added language allowing it to delay its annual shareholder meeting and making it tougher for unhappy investors to push for changes…
Trade
Vietnam Releases Dissidents Amid U.S. Trade Talks Time ...Vietnam has granted early release to two more high profile dissidents. The unusual moves come as the country is negotiating a free trade deal with the United States. Washington has said that it would be hard to get the deal past Congress unless Vietnam made some meaningful steps toward improving its human rights record...
US-Japan deadlock points to no April TPP deal for Obama Financial Times ...An impasse between the US and Japan over import tariffs means Barack Obama’s visit to Tokyo this month looks unlikely to yield the prize that some had hoped for: the key to uniting a dozen Pacific Rim economies in one trade zone...
State Battles
11 Missouri lawmakers in right-to-work spotlight Associated Press ...That's the number of Republicans who didn't vote last week when the chamber gave initial approval to a proposed ballot measure that would ask voters to prohibit union fees from being a condition of employment...
The War on Workers
You Know What Doesn’t Work So Well? Private Prisons Working America ...The myth put forth by private prison corporations like Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group that private prisons are cheaper than public prisons is shattered by a new report from In the Public Interest, thus undercutting the primary rationale for prison privatization efforts across the country...
Pay for Performance? It Depends on the Measuring Stick New York Times ...The median compensation for C.E.O.s at the 100 largest companies that have filed so far was $13.9 million, according to the Equilar 100 C.E.O. Pay Study, conducted by Equilar, an executive compensation data firm. That’s up 9 percent from 2012...
Jamie Dimon to JPMorgan Shareholders: Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes Wall Street on Parade ...Out of total deposits of $1.3 trillion, Dimon says that a mere $19 billion of credit was extended to U.S. small businesses last year. And yet, that’s a key U.S. engine of job growth. In contrast, the bank “provided $274 billion of credit to consumers,” raising the concern that the weak job market and stagnating wages are forcing more households into deeper debt...
Charles Koch’s public message represents rhetorical spin at its flimsiest (opinion) Kansas City Star ...Koch’s analysis is that he and his brother ought to be free to run their vast pipeline, fossil-fuels and other businesses without restraint. What he declines to recognize is the idea that government can serve to protect citizens from the wanton, unregulated forces of corporate actions that spew toxic materials into our air and water, limit the economic power of American people and otherwise endanger our daily lives...
Miscellaneous
Google, once disdainful of lobbying, now a master of Washington influence Washington Post ...Google — once a lobbying weakling — has come to master a new method of operating in modern-day Washington, where spending on traditional lobbying is rivaled by other, less visible forms of influence. That system includes financing sympathetic research at universities and think tanks, investing in nonprofit advocacy groups across the political spectrum and funding pro-business coalitions cast as public-interest projects...
