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June 09, 2014 06:56 AM UTC

Monday Open Thread

  • 37 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

"When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt."

–Henry J. Kaiser

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37 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread”

  1. MONDAY UPDATE: Log Cabin Repubs Attack Polis again, suggesting that allowing communites to make decisions affecting them is 'elistist,' this time in sophmoric verse.  

    And letter from (no wild eyed leftists here) letter from Action 22, Colorado Association of Home Builders, Colorado Association of Wheat Growers, Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, Colorado Corn Grower’s Association, Colorado Dairy Farmers, Colorado Farm Bureau,Progressive 15 to Hick: 

    We are concerned that the draft 
    language gives to the oil and gas industry protections that will be afforded no other industry or 
    business in the state. We all know how valuable the oil and gas industry is to the state’s 
    economy but whether it is real estate, agriculture or small businesses, our members also 
    collectively contribute billions of dollars annually to the state. The agricultural sector, alone, 
    contributes $40 billion annually to the state’s economy. The homebuilding industry, which at 
    the height of the Great Recession suffered unemployment rates in excess of 30 percent, is just 
    now starting to recover and once again employ Coloradans and build homes. The welfare of 
    our industries and businesses deserves attention equal to that of our friends in the oil and gas 
    industry.

     

    1. Davebarnes, they exist in the nexus of self-loathing and greed. The Republicans will happily take their money, and giving it to them in exchange for their "tolerance" helps assuage some of the self-loathing.

  3. Tancredo on boyles today, attacking the Obama administration over the pow swap…..Tancredo who used an "emotional disability" to escape the draft…..and

    boyles, who never talks, now, about his "military service"…………

  4. Is it possible for Republicans in Washington to be wrong on every issue?

    (CNN) — Comedian Tracy Morgan remained in critical condition early Monday following a weekend car wreck, but the actor's publicist said he's showing signs of improvement.

    The wreck took place about 1 a.m. Saturday when the limo van Morgan was in was hit by a tractor-trailer on the New Jersey Turnpike, police said.

    …The driver, 35-year-old Kevin Roper, is charged with one count of death by auto and four counts of assault by auto, the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office said.  He was a driver for Walmart.

    We know Walmart pushes their drivers hard. I see those Walmart trucks flying thru CO all the time. Don't you? And maybe a little oversight with their schedules would keep the company from having them drive 20 hours a day. 

    Or not:

    It's not clear yet what factors caused the crash, but the tragedy is likely to highlight a move by the Senate Appropriations Committee last week to undermine a federal regulation mandating truck driver rest.

    Last week, the committee passed an amendment that would suspend a requirement that truck drivers rest for at least 34 consecutive hours — including two nights from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. — before beginning their next work week.

    The so-called "restart" regulation was among a number of changes that took effect last summer with the aim of reducing driver fatigue.

    The new rules also limit the maximum average work week for truck drivers to 70 hours, a decrease from the previous maximum of 82 hours, and require drivers to take a 30-minute break during the first eight hours of a shift.

    The measure was pushed by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). 

    Oh yeah, Susan Collins is a "moderate" one…..who always happens to consort with the Luddites.

    We're probably just preventing Walmart from making enough profits. They're barely scraping by. And anyway, all those truckers are "independent contractors" and Walmart has no say in how they do their jobs.

    A subsidiary of Schneider Logistics Inc. has agreed to pay $21 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by California warehouse workers who say they were illegally underpaid, denied required overtime compensation and retaliated against when they complained.

    The proposed settlement is a "great victory," a lawyer for the workers said Friday, for employees who allege they labored under a complicated and confusing piece-work system, didn't get mandatory rest and meal breaks, and sometimes were required to report to the warehouses but then were sent home without pay.

    The case also represents "a huge win" in untangling multilevel business operations — where one company contracts with another to run its warehouses, and that firm turns to yet another company to provide the actual labor — said the attorney, Theresa Traber of Pasadena, Calif.

    Traber helped represent some 1,800 people who worked more than 12 years at three huge Wal-Mart Stores Inc. warehouses — each covers about two city blocks — in Mira Loma, Calif., east of Los Angeles.

    There, the employees, many of them not fluent in English, sometimes worked 16 to 20 hours a day, documents filed by the plaintiffs say.

    Since 2006, Schneider, which is part of the Green Bay-based trucking and logistics firm, has operated the warehouses for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Schneider, meanwhile, contracted with two smaller firms, Premier Warehousing Ventures and Impact Logistics, to handle loading and unloading at the sprawling distribution centers.

    ​Premier and Impact hired the workers — "lumpers" in industry jargon — but Traber and her colleagues argued that Schneider and Wal-Mart also bore responsibility for compliance with workplace regulations.

    The two companies contended they were not so-called "joint employers," but U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder, in a ruling in January, didn't buy the argument.

    As a result, Schneider and Wal-Mart remained potentially liable in the case, paving the way for the settlement agreement filed with the court in Los Angeles last week.

    "A lot of industries, including warehousing and logistics, have developed this whole multitiered system," Traber said. "So, in this context, retail giants like Wal-Mart team up with huge logistics companies like Schneider, and they hire employees through subcontractors and then claim they have no responsibility for complying with the labor laws with respect to those workers. And yet they determine productivity standards, hours, pay and all kinds of things."

    And it's just so darned complicated we better just let these Job Creators do whatever they want and we better let the Freedom Truckers work as many hours as it takes to get that Chinese-made stuff to the store shelves. Right?

      1. My son worked briefly at Walmart as a part time job in High School. For years after, we received notice after notice of class action suits. One was about workers being cheated by being forced to work without pay. Either the workers were forced to clock out, then return to work off the clock or managers adjusted their time card info later. Either way, they were being forced to work without pay and without the benefits their hours actually should have qualified them for. 

        Another was about undocumented workers being locked in the store overnight. Another was about gender discrimination in promotions. Since our kid was just part time and not an undocumented worker or female he didn't benefit but Walmart lost most suits and didn't care because it was still cheaper than if they had operated legally in the first place. 

        Breaking the law repeatedly over decades and getting successfully sued for it is just part of their business model along with relying on government programs to keep their non-living wage workers, you know, alive with enough food to eat, medical attention and a roof over their heads. Guess the cost of the former is nothing compared to the value of the tax payer financed subsidies represented by the latter in terms of creating profit. 

        The old titans of industry, together with unions, created valuable product, living wage jobs and the greatest middle class the world has ever known. We got plenty of value in return for making them extremely wealthy, though not nearly as wealthy as the welfare King, repeat offender Waltons are today. You shouldn't have to be a lefty to object to Walmart's serial law breaking and dependence on welfare.

        1. One of my younger brothers worked at Walmart many years ago. A large box fell on him from an upper shelf in a warehouse, struck him on the head and shoulders, injuring him.
          Being young and naive, he just took some (unpaid) time off until he felt better. When he later started experiencing serious pain and mobility issues, they fired him and denied his disability claim.He did not relate this to me until years later, so I was unable to advise him about it. Walmart did nothing to help him and now it is far too late.

  6. I wrote to my legislators this morning – my own and some on the Senate and House Committees that oversee Natural Resources and Energy. On this page is a link (download  legislative directory in xcl format), with contact info for all, should you feel moved to do likewise.  Rep. Polis' office contact info is here, if you want to tell him a. ignore the LCR haters, and b. please hang in there on local control.

    I wrote: Please don't  pass Hullinghorst's local control compromise legislation as written, ( by amending CRS 34-60-131) for the following reasons:

    • The language seems to me to be entirely too trusting of the oil and gas industry to do the right thing, and entirely too limiting of the power of local communities to do the right thing by their residents.
    • EX: B, III, c: local governments standards may be more stringent than the minimum state standards, EXCEPT that they may be "pre-empted" if adhering to these standards would limit oil and gas production in any way. In other words, even if the local government sets a high standard for noise, setbacks, pollution prevention, if the industry determines that this might "pre-empt" them from being able to "recover the oil and gas resource" in that community, this law gives the right of production to the industry, and ignores the community's wishes.
    •  Local communities can require additional setbacks – but industry is then allowed to "configure additional drilling units" to "allow additional surface locations" – so you could have more drilling, not less.
    • There appear to be no provisions for funding additional inspectors, except that it says that the local government can hire private inspectors and charge the companies.
    • No moratoriums. No bans. Even if the local government has already instituted them? This legislation would seem to nullify lawfully conducted elections in Lafayette, Broomfield, Boulder, Fort Collins, and Lafayette? What happens to our faith in democracy?
    • If there is an "operational conflict", i.e. possibility that O&G production would be stopped, the company gets to appeal to the local government, and basically this law says that they get to keep on drilling. the moratorium can't last longer than thirty days.
    • There is no language about water contamination- it does say that it has to comply with all fed and state regs – but no provision for floods, disasters which are overrunning existing containment.
    • There is no provision to study whether earthquakes can be caused by deep toxic waste injection and tracking – which is an increasingly common pattern  around tracking sites nationwide. 

    Or, you could just go with Michael Bowman's friend's summation: 

    To summarize the bill: It appears that it empowers Local governments can do whatever they like … so long as it doesn't in any way impede on the "recovery" of oil and gas.

     

     

     

    1. Thanks, David (and good to hear from you).  KUNC had a great piece on broadband applications to agriculture (or lack thereof) last Friday and focused the story on Yuma County.  If this (Colorado) administration worked half-as-hard at supporting 21st-century infrastructure for the $40 billion Colorado ag industry (that will be providing food, renewable electrons and environmental services long, long after the O&G business has left the state) as it did coddling just their form of energy, we'd have a real blueprint for lasting prosperity. 

      I guess we can just keep dreamin'….

      I'm not making this statement to give a 'pass' to Colorado agriculture or its rural communities.  While we pretend to be 'independent', while we ignore the science of climate change, while we make everything an 'us v. them' debate – we are literally drowning in programs from the federal level to support the transition.  If we spent half the energy creating partnerships with the Front Range as we do fighting them – we'd create these opportunities overnight.

       

       

    2. …and in the "Life in a Small Town" news section today, last night at about 11pm I was stopped by the Wray police for having a tail light out on my Suburban.  A check of my drivers license presented a problem:  I have a Commercial Drivers License (CDL) as I drive our farm semi-tractor and in the past drove a school bus for the local district field trips.  My medical (required for the CDL rating) expired last month and I hadn't gotten around to getting it renewed, so unbeknownst to me, the lapsed medical caused my license to come up 'suspended' in the state database.  By then there were enough cop cars with flashing lights around me that it looked more like a drug bust than a bad tail light.

      While I'm sitting in the front seat waiting for the officer to give me the go-ahead to go home (escorted, as I don't have a legit license) I'm getting texts from locals who heard the chatter on their police scanner, who now know I'm in town, and wanting to know if they can 'help'?  Complete with a smiley face… 

      Off to the local clinic to get my blood pressure checked, and practice my *cough*. 

    1. Duke, we haven't flown anywhere since before Georgie's wars, and this is a lot of why. We've taken a few looong drives, but no flying. I refuse to pay exorbitant fees for the dubious privliedge of being treated like a crimnal, packed into a seat smaller than some pet crates and charged for "extras" tht used to be caled "service". I feel bad for some people who must fly, but I needn't so I shan't

    2. That's annoying.

      A while back I took a flight leaving from DIA; I can't remember which airline I was flying, but when I went to go through security my carry-on didn't fit in the sizing box. I was told the sizing box was provided by United, and that if I wanted to carry on the luggage, I'd have to go through Concourse A security, where United didn't provide the sizing boxes… Apparently United had enough pull to override the other airlines at the security line.

      Sigh. (And yes, the article's author is right – that isn't an FAA rule, it is one implemented by the airlines.)

  10. For God's sake, Uncle Sam, end this useless war on cannabis.  (btw, Mr. President, you could fix this with a simple Executive Order).

    The DEA’s confusion is unwarranted, according to U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Louisville), who helped draft the Farm Bill legislation. McConnell recently released a statement, saying he was frustrated that "the DEA is using its finite resources to stymie plainly lawful hemp pilot projects at the very time Kentucky is facing growing threats from heroin addiction and other drug abuse."

    Does this look like a weapon of mass destruction to you?

      1. You do know, don't you, that our government holds a patent for the medicinal benefits of cannabis, while simultaneously classifying it as a Schedule 1 drug? (a condition of Schedule 1 designation is that it has a high potential for abuse and no recognized medical use).  I wish I was making this up….

      1. According to this article:

        The law says the attorney general, by enacting regulations, can "remove any drug or other substance from the schedules" if the attorney general decides it belongs in a less-restricted category. Every attorney general has delegated that authority to the DEA.

         

         

          1. Which is why an Executive Order has always been an option.  The industry would prefer that Congress deal with the issue head-on so there is certainty beyond this Adminstration (the thought being a Republican administration may not be industrial hemp friendly – a notion I disagree with).  But this is getting ridiculous.  While the authority has been delegated to DEA, it's not legally required.

            1. I stand corrected. It appears that an Executive Order telling the AG or HHS Secretary to reschedule Cannibis would work – though it could be reversed in short order with a new administration.

              And rescheduling marijuana specifically would be limited by international treaty to Schedule III under the most lenient of readings. Industrial hemp, on the other hand, is legal under the treaty and it's only the DEA that keeps us from growing the stuff.

              1. And my apologies for seemingly conflating the two.  In this particular case I was talking about Industrial Hemp.  The historcial concern has always been the thought a Republican President would reverse such an order – so the EO would do little to grow the industry over concerns of it being short-lived.  With the (current) Senate Minority Leader McConnell a co-sponsor of S.359, the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2013, and broad Republican support for ending its prohibition in both the Senate and the House- I don't believe that is any longer a concern. 

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