Sunday, April 22, 2012

Today's Teamster News 04.22.12

Conservative Nonprofit Acts as a Stealth Business Lobbyist  New York Times   ... special interests effectively turn ALEC’s lawmaker members into stealth lobbyists, providing them with talking points, signaling how they should vote and collaborating on bills affecting hundreds of issues like school vouchers and tobacco taxes...
Independent and Principled? Behind the Cato Myth  The Nation   ...The same pundits who only yesterday fell over themselves defending the billionaire Koch brothers as principled libertarians now denounce their benefactors as venal Republican Party warmongers out to crush the Cato Institute’s “nonpartisan” “independent” “scholarship” for the crime of being, yes, principled libertarians...
Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart After Top-Level Struggle  New York Times   ...bribery played a persistent and significant role in Wal-Mart’s rapid growth in Mexico, where Wal-Mart now employs 209,000 people, making it the country’s largest private employer...
Mitt Romney, American Parasite  Village Voice   ...While Georgetown was beginning its descent to bankruptcy, Romney was helping himself to the company’s treasury...
Regional and State Employment and Unemployment -- March 2012  Bureau of Labor Statistics   ...The largest over-the-year percentage decrease in employment occurred in Wisconsin (-0.9 percent)...
The growing optimism on housing is not justified  Credit Writedowns   ...the significant number of potential foreclosures that were held back by the scandal will now begin to be processed and show up in future inventories. It is highly likely that the vast number of distressed houses coming into the market will depress prices even more in the period ahead...