Fast-Food Workers to Walk Out for Higher Pay - Hartford Courant

Fast-Food Workers to Walk Out for Higher Pay - Hartford Courant: "Even when Kevin Burgos was a manager of a Dunkin' Donuts in Hartford, he made less than the $15 an hour workers are demanding in a one-day protest Thursday.

Burgos, 26, said he stepped down as manager three years ago so he could have more time to work on getting a commercial driver's license, and now, after eight years with the company, makes $10.50 an hour, working 35 hours a week as an assistant manager. When he was a manager, he said, he was paid $27,300 a year, or about $13 an hour."

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Fast-food workers call for nationwide walkout Aug. 29 - Washington Post

Fast-food workers call for nationwide walkout Aug. 29 - Washington Post: "The workers — who are backed by local community groups and national unions and have held one-day walkouts in cities such as New York, St. Louis and Detroit — say they have received pledges of support from workers in dozens of cities across the country.

The workers are calling for a wage of $15 an hour and the right to form a union. Organizers of the walkout say cashiers, cooks and crew members at fast-food restaurants are paid a median wage of $8.94 an hour."

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Berry Pickers Walk Out, Boycott | Labor Notes

Berry Pickers Walk Out, Boycott | Labor Notes: "As non-union fast food workers’ strikes caught the public eye this summer, at the other end of the food chain, farmworkers were also stopping work. Pickers at Sakuma Brothers Farms north of Seattle have walked off the berry fields twice and launched a boycott.

More than 250 migrant farmworkers walked in silence, like a great wave, from the labor camp where they live to a field office July 10."

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Web site backing McDonnell seeks funds for his legal costs - The Washington Post

Web site backing McDonnell seeks funds for his legal costs - The Washington Post: "“That is an effort to start a process of having citizens of the commonwealth remember that they really like this guy and he has been a really good governor,” Galen said. “We want people to remember he’s done really good stuff, really bipartisan stuff.”

Investigators are exploring the McDonnell family’s relationship to Star Scientific chief executive Jonnie R. Williams Sr., who gave gifts to the first family at a time when the governor and first lady Maureen McDonnell promoted its dietary supplement, Anatabloc. McDonnell did not disclose some of Williams’s largess. State ethics laws, among the most permissive in the nation, allow office-holders to accept gifts of any value but require disclosure of those worth more than $50. Gifts to immediate relatives do not have to be reported."

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Sheldon Adelson Pays Out to the U.S. Government - The Daily Beast

You shouldn't bribe people.

Sheldon Adelson Pays Out to the U.S. Government - The Daily Beast: "Adelson’s casino company, Las Vegas Sands Corp. cut its losses this week when it agreed to pay $47 million to the U.S. government to settle a federal money laundering investigation with ties to a Mexican methamphetamine cartel. In exchange, Obama’s Dept. of Justice agreed not to prosecute the company for failing to report suspicious activity on the part of Zhenli Ye Gon, a high-rolling customer whose shady money transfers ought to have alarmed casino compliance officials and been reported to authorities."

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Obama Bestows Medal Of Honor On Staff Sgt. Ty Carter

Awesome!

Obama Bestows Medal Of Honor On Staff Sgt. Ty Carter: " President Barack Obama bestowed the Medal of Honor on Army Staff Sgt. Ty Carter on Monday, saluting the veteran of the war in Afghanistan as “the essence of true heroism.”

Carter risked his life to save an injured soldier and to resupply ammunition to his comrades during intense fighting in a remote mountain outpost four years ago.

“As these soldiers and families will tell you, they’re a family forged in battle, and loss, and love,” Obama said as Carter stood at his side and members of his unit watched in the White House East Room."

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Republican Sensenbrenner vows to repair Voting Rights Act — MSNBC

Interesting discussion.

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Republican Sensenbrenner vows to repair Voting Rights Act — MSNBC:

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Republican Sensenbrenner vows to repair Voting Rights Act

Evan Puschak

9:46 PM on 08/26/2013

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Just weeks after Texas and North Carolina passed controversial and restrictive new voter I.D. laws, Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner is vowing to reverse the recent Supreme Court ruling which made them possible.

“The first thing we have to do is take the monkey wrench that the court threw in it, out of the Voting Rights Act, and then use that monkey wrench to be able to fix it so that it is alive, well, constitutional and impervious to another challenge that will be filed by the usual suspects,” Sensenbrenner said Monday at an RNC event held to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington.

Sensenbrenner is a longtime advocate of the Voting Rights Act. As chair of the House Judiciary Committee when the law was reviewed in 2006, the Wisconsin legislator oversaw extensive deliberations which ultimately affirmed the VRA’s continuing necessity–and resulted in a 25-year reauthorization. So when the Supreme Court effectively gutted the VRA in June by voiding the requirement for certain states to get federal “preclearance” before changing their voting laws, Sensenbrenner was displeased.

“Voter discrimination still exists,” he wrote in a June op-ed for USA Today, “and our progress toward equality should not be mistaken for a victory.”

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Unsafe Welding Led to Deadly Gulf Accident | Story ID: 21023 | Construction Equipment Guide

Crappy everywhere.

Unsafe Welding Led to Deadly Gulf Accident | Story ID: 21023 | Construction Equipment Guide: "A consultant's report for a Texas-based company says a deadly 2012 explosion on its Gulf of Mexico oil platform off the Louisiana coast happened when workers for a subcontractor used unsafe welding practices.
The report was released Wednesday, the same day two injured workers and their spouses filed a $180 million federal lawsuit in connection with the accident."

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Debt Ceiling Deadline: Mid-October - Business Insider

Debt Ceiling Deadline: Mid-October - Business Insider: "Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said in a letter to Congressional leaders on Monday that the nation's will hit its borrowing limit in mid-October, giving Congress a clear deadline for raising the debt ceiling. "

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Here's The Saddest Line In The New York Attorney General's Lawsuit Against Donald Trump's Alleged 'Sham' 'University' - Business Insider

So damn funny!

Here's The Saddest Line In The New York Attorney General's Lawsuit Against Donald Trump's Alleged 'Sham' 'University' - Business Insider: "Instead of a personal appearance from Donald Trump as some consumers were led to expect, some participants got their photographs taken with a life-size photo of Mr. Trump."

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