Visual Source: Newseum
Wal-Mart Stores asked the Supreme Court to make a million or more of the company?s current and former female employees fend for themselves in individual lawsuits instead of seeking billions of dollars for discrimination in a class-action lawsuit. Wal-Mart got what it wanted from the court ? unanimous dismissal of the suit as the plaintiffs presented it ? and more from the five conservative justices, who went further in restricting class actions in general.The majority opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia will make it substantially more difficult for class-action suits in all manner of cases to move forward.
John Bryson's nomination to be President Obama's next secretary of Commerce has been met with the predictable combination of delusion and obstructionism that characterizes the modern confirmation process. Some Senate Republicans vow to hold him hostage to the passage of several long-sought free-trade agreements; others insist they will reject him based on his presumed politics, which they wish were more like theirs. None has advanced an argument worthy of defeating this nomination, and though sensible people will withhold a final judgment until after Bryson is questioned, his credentials are encouraging, as are the endorsements of those who know him.
ABOUT 50 women took the keys to their family cars and drove the streets of Saudi Arabia last week. Protesting the conservative Islamic monarchy?s restrictions on their rights, the women?s action, however small, was certainly brave. It also showed the enduring power of the Arab Spring liberation movements throughout the Middle East. [...]The impetus for the ?driving while female? protest was a desire for the rights that Saudi women see others enjoying in other Islamic countries. Throughout the kingdom, on websites and Twitter feeds, these women portrayed driving as a form of equality, but not necessarily compared with their male relatives. They simply want to be treated the same as their Islamic sisters who live under an interpretation of religious law that has no similar ban.
CHARITABLE GIVING is up in the United States. In normal times, that would be unqualified good news. The problem is that the increase in giving pales in comparison to what is being taken away in the current siege of budget cuts.A new report by Giving USA found that individual Americans and corporations gave $291 billion to charity in 2010, a $10 billion increase from 2009. The report said Americans had to ?dig deeper as their income and wealth have declined, but they have shown they are willing to do that.??
Meanwhile, Washington has slashed social services budgets, and Republicans are talking about making more cuts.
It is not clear if Americans collectively plan to reconcile these two worlds. The 2010 midterm electorate bought us a far more conservative Congress, and the race for the White House in 2012 is already thick with boasts of who can cut taxes and social spending even more. The one thing that is for certain is that charitable giving is a puny substitute for government.
Steven Chu, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy:
In Georgia and across the country, families and businesses are feeling the impact of rising gas prices. At the same time, the United States is spending about $1 billion a day to import oil ? money that we should be investing in American energy and American jobs. [...]President Barack Obama is committed to easing the burden of gas prices for Georgia?s families and to putting America back in control of our energy future. As he works to do what he can to ease the immediate pain, he has a long-term plan to reduce oil imports by one-third in a little more than a decade. Instead of relying on others, we?ll rely on America?s vast clean energy resources and unrivaled leadership in technological innovation. Our ?all of the above? approach includes increasing domestic production, diversifying our transportation energy choices, and developing more efficient vehicles that will save you money.
As the floodwaters slowly recede along the lower Mississippi River, we can begin to take stock of the flood of 2011, the most devastating since the epic deluge of 1927.Most striking, by far, is what didn?t happen: Although many people and communities suffered, overall economic and social life in and around the most important arterial waterway in the U.S. suffered only minimal injury. The national economy dodged a bullet at a vulnerable moment.
What went right? First and foremost, the emergency flood strategy devised by the Army Corps of Engineers after the 1927 disaster proved out.
It was the British economist John Maynard Keynes who famously wrote that ideas, "both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else." Right now, I'm worried about the damage that might be done by one particularly wrong-headed idea: the notion that, in stark contrast to Keynes's teaching, government spending destroys jobs.No, that's not a typo. House Speaker John Boehner and other Republicans regularly rail against "job-killing government spending." Think about that for a minute. The claim is that employment actually declines when federal spending rises. Using the same illogic, employment should soar if we made massive cuts in public spending?as some are advocating right now.
Acting on such a belief would imperil a still-shaky economy that is not generating nearly enough jobs. So let's ask: How, exactly, could more government spending "kill jobs"?
Don't pay too much attention to the headline unemployment rate of 9.1 percent. It is scary enough, but it is a gloss on the reality. These numbers do not include the millions who have stopped looking for a job or who are working part time but would work full time if a position were available. And they count only those people who have actively applied for a job within the last four weeks.Include those others and the real number is a nasty 16 percent.
Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/cYoh-HYORRQ/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Round-up
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