Today's Teamster News 11.02.13

George Miranda Named to Board of the Global Gateway Alliance  teamster.org   ...George Miranda, International Vice President and Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 210, is joining the Board of Directors of the Global Gateway Alliance, an industry coalition dedicated to improving airports in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area...
McDonald's Scam on America  Alternet   ...We're subsidizing the wages and benefits of employees of highly profitable fast food chains. It costs the American taxpayer nearly $7 billion per year...
As Cuts to Food Stamps Take Effect, More Trims to Benefits Are Expected  New York Times   ...millions of Americans receiving food stamps will be required to get by with less government assistance every month, a move that not only will cost them money they use to feed their families but is expected to slightly dampen economic growth as well...
Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement: Job Claims Are Pure Baloney  Economic Policy Institute   ...U.S. trade with Mexico after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has cost the United States nearly 700,000 jobs through 2010. U.S. trade with China has certainly failed to deliver on the promised benefits of growing exports. Since that country entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, the U.S. has lost 2.7 million jobs through 2011 due to growing trade deficits with China. And the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) has also resulted in growing trade deficits with that country and the loss of more than 40,000 U.S. jobs...
How the 1 percent always wins: Liberal washing is the right’s new favorite tactic  Salon   ...The famous examples of liberal washing come from the White House. A few decades ago, Democratic President Bill Clinton liberal-washed corporatist schemes like NAFTA and financial deregulation. Today, it is Democratic President Barack Obama liberal-washing the insurance industry’s healthcare initiatives and now joining with a handful of Democratic legislators to liberalwash – and legitimize – the right-wing crusade to slash Social Security benefits...
House Passes Deregulation Bill Written by Citigroup  The Real News   ...the one that was driven by Citibank that would allow a wide range of financial derivatives to be done directly by the bank, which is to say, the insured entity, which is to say, the government would be on the hook if there were losses. And Dodd-Frank was designed to prevent or at least dramatically minimize that. So this is a truly awful bill...
UK Energy Firms Guilty of Market Manipulation to Face Criminal Charges  Oil Price   ...Ed Davey, the Energy Minister, has now stated that the government may charge energy firms that are found guilty of manipulating the markets, with criminal sanctions...
Fannie Mae Sues Banks for $800 Million Over Libor Rigging  Bloomberg   ...Fannie Mae (FNMA) sued nine banks, alleging that their manipulation of the benchmark London interbank offered rate, which four of them have admitted, cost the mortgage-financing company about $800 million...
Wall Street’s favorite Democrat wants your pension  Salon   ...The financial services industry hopes to gain even more control over workers' retirement savings...
North Carolina, Come On and Rise Up  Portside   ...This past summer, "Moral Mondays" in North Carolina emerged as the locus of one of the country's most insistent state-level movements against extremist efforts to slash the social safety net and roll back civil rights...
Top court ruling upholds free speech, union lawyer says  Youngstown Vindicator   ...The Ohio Supreme Court delivered a major victory for labor unions when it ruled in a Mahoning County case. The court ruled that a state law requiring a union to give a public employer and the State Employment Relations Board 10 days’ advance notice of strike picketing does not apply to informational picketing...

Reagan-era judge says deregulation 'a mistake'

We know deregulating the banks was a mistake. But here's a judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan saying it was a mistake to deregulate the banks.

Huffington Post has the story:

Federal judge Richard Posner said his one-time support for deregulating the financial industry was based on a “basic misunderstanding,” in an interview with Eliot Spitzer on Current TV. His about-face is all the more noteworthy because Posner was appointed by Ronald Reagan, the president known to advocate for leaving businesses alone. 

“I was an advocate of the deregulation movement and I made -- along with a lot of other smart people -- a fundamental mistake, which is that deregulation works fine in industries which do not pervade the economy,” he said in the appearance on Spitzer’s “Viewpoint.” “The financial industry undergirded the entire economy and if it is made riskier by deregulation and collapses in widespread bankruptcies as what happened in 2008, the entire economy freezes because it runs on credit.”

Duh-oh.

Today's Teamster News 03.29.12

JOBS Act benefits financial criminals (Opinion)  Marketwatch  ...Criminal minds must be working overtime now, because the new legislation — which seemingly every investor- and consumer-protection group has railed against — effectively makes it open season on small investors...
US employs Vinnie the Kneecapper to collect student debt  Automatic Earth   ...With $67 billion of student loans in default, the Education Department is turning to an army of private debt-collection companies to put the squeeze on borrowers. Working on commissions that totaled about $1 billion last year, these government contractors face growing complaints that they are violating federal laws...
Bill banning picketing of homes unites unlikely Ga. coalition of tea partiers, labor unions  Associated Press   ...State lawmakers must decide Thursday on the final day of their session whether to pass legislation that targets labor unions. A range of groups who don't often agree with organized labor — libertarian tea partyers, small-government Republicans, anti-abortion activists and others — want it rejected, saying the bill fixes a problem that doesn't exist and would harm their free speech rights, too...
Mitt Romney amuses Wisconsin voters with yarn about Michigan losing an auto plant  Detroit Free Press   ...Mitt Romney told a jokey anecdote on a conference call today with Wisconsin primary voters that had Michigan – and the closing of an auto plant – as part of the punch line...
Public safety concerns amid probation cutbacks  ABC 7   ...The Teamsters Local Union 2011, which represents most Florida corrections officers, filed an administrative petition, challenging the decision on grounds it violates Florida law and endangers its communities. Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott calls the decision regrettable, noting "folks are generally better behaved when they know they are being watched."... 
Teamsters join in the protest against selling off Ontario Northland assets  Timmins Times   ...Queen’s Park has alternatives to selling off the 106-year-old Ontario Northland Railway and killing jobs and negatively impacting thousands of lives in Northern Ontario, according to the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference Maintenance of Way Employees, which represents 200 ONR workers...

Today's Teamster News 03.23.12

More than 1 million manufacturing jobs could be created in U.S. if Americans bought more U.S.-made goods, economist says  Cleveland Plain Dealer   ...if Americans spent just $100 billion on U.S. goods instead of foreign goods - a gap that has widened the last few years - then that would create more than 1 million jobs in manufacturing in the United States...
'The American Economic Model Is Broken'  Financial Armageddon   ...A staggering 63% of respondents across the political spectrum feel that the American economic model is broken. Individuals surveyed do not agree that the prevailing paradigm facilitates equal opportunity, or that hard work and skill are rewarded...
The Wall Street Surcharge On Your Gas Tank  Economic Populist   ...A new, very timely St. Louis Federal Reserve research paper, Speculation in the Oil Market finds 15% of oil price increases are due to speculation and is the second most powerful mover of prices beyond actual physical demand...
Senate Passes JOBS Act, STOCK Act  firedoglake   ...the JOBS Act, a bill that promises an impossible solution to an unrelated problem, which is a mask for its true agenda, to weaken investor protection rules to the benefit of Wall Street firms and corporations...
The GOP’s assault on labor rights: What is happening in the states?  The Hill   ...not one new job has been created by this tsunami of anti-union legislation...
Marietta, Teamsters contract ratified  News and Sentinel   ...A three-year contract with Teamsters Local 637 was ratified ... Terms of the agreement include a 15 percent per pay period contribution by employees toward their health insurance premiums and annual pay increases...