Teamsters
Teamsters Denounce Senate Passage Of Omnibus Spending Bill teamster.org …"With the passage of the omnibus spending bill by the Senate, we have witnessed the latest attack by corporate interests on working families...
Trade
Call for release of Trans-Pacific Partnership text ComputerWorld ...Forty-eight non-government organisations have issued a call for the release of the draft text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement...
State Battles
Early federal sentencing recommendation for McDonnell: At least 10 years in prison Washington Post ...The federal agency that will play a pivotal role in guiding the sentence of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell has recommended that the onetime Republican rising star spend at least 10 years and a month in prison, according to several people familiar with the matter...
War on Workers
Cromnibus Pension Provisions Gut Forty Years of Policy, Allow Existing Pensions to Be Slashed naked capitalism …[The] measure included in Congress’s mammoth spending bill permits benefit cuts for retirees in one type of pension plan, a big shift that lawmakers and others believe could set a precedent for other troubled retirement programs. Lawmakers and experts, while divided over the merits of the change, largely agreed that it could well be the first of many...
Study: For every $1 corporations spend on elections, they get $760 from government Ring of Fire …From 2007 to 2012, 200 American corporations spent about $5.8 billion on federal lobbying and campaign contributions, but that number is mere chump change when compared to what those same corporations got in return — about $4.4 trillion in federal business and support, according to a study by the Sunlight Foundation...
What's Complicated About a Government That Works to Benefit Rich People? Center for Economic Policy and Research ...we have had a government committed to redistributing income upward for the last three decades...
Congress Again Rewards Tax Dodgers with a Tax Cut Economic Policy Institute ...If a $1 budget reduction yields a $10.60 reduction in enforcement collections, then the $191 million reduction in the IRS enforcement budget could prove to be a $2 billion tax cut for tax cheats. There appears to be a disconnect between what Congress enacts and what the American public wants...
Transport strike likely to shut down much of Belgium Agence France-Press ...Belgium risks coming to a virtual standstill tomorrow as the biggest national strike for years grounds all flights, halts public transport and severs international train links in a protest over the new government's austerity policies...
Smoke killed Thanksgiving Tower workers trapped in deep tank, officials say Dallas Morning News ...Three workers killed in a Thanksgiving Tower fire died of smoke inhalation while trapped in a “dilapidated” 35-foot-deep chiller tank, authorities said Friday. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Dallas Fire-Rescue are investigating Thursday’s blaze. A city official said it appeared that the workers did not follow proper safety procedures, nor did they have the proper permit to do work with a torch, although officials still haven’t confirmed what started the fire...
Miscellaneous
Will cheap oil kill Keystone? Politico Pro …The same collapse in oil prices that is pumping dollars into motorists’ wallets also risks undermining the case for building the 1,179-mile pipeline in two crucial ways: It’s squeezing the western Canadian oil industry that has looked to Keystone as its most promising route to the Gulf Coast...
Dancing around data The Hill …A recent Pew study found that ninety-one percent of Americans say that they have “lost control” over how their personal information is collected or used by companies...
