RSN: Noam Chomsky: 5 Reasons Why the 'Human Species Is in Very Deep Trouble' if Trump Wins

Reader Supported News | 10 March 16

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Curator, Reader Supported News

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Noam Chomsky: 5 Reasons Why the 'Human Species Is in Very Deep Trouble' if Trump Wins 
 
Alexandra Rosenmann, AlterNet 
Excerpt: "'Trump says all sorts of things,' Noam Chomsky reminded us. 'Some of them make sense; Some of them are crazy. But the U.S. is an extremely powerful state [and] if Trump means what he's saying, the human species is in very deep trouble.' Here are his top five reasons why." 
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Contentious Miami Democratic Debate Features Distinct Hispanic Flavor 
Patricia Mazzei, McClatchy 
Mazzei writes: "They had debated just four days earlier, but when Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders took each other on in Miami Wednesday night, the Democratic presidential debate felt different. More pressing. More intense. And, of course, a little more en espanol." 
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Pentagon Admits It Has Deployed Military Spy Drones Over US 
Gregg Zoroya, USA Today 
"The Pentagon has deployed drones to spy over U.S. territory for non-military missions over the past decade, but the flights have been rare and lawful, according to a new report." 
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Trump Challenged Over Past Relationship With Racist, Mob Figure 
Michael Isikoff, Yahoo News 
Isikoff writes: "The daughter of a reputed New Jersey mob figure says her late father had a longtime relationship with Donald Trump that included gambling millions of dollars at one of his casinos, flying on his helicopter and partying aboard his private yacht." 
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Donald Trump at the opening of his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, April 1990. 

(photo: Gamblin Yann/Paris Match/Getty)

he daughter of a reputed New Jersey mob figure says her late father had a longtime relationship with Donald Trump that included gambling millions of dollars at one of his casinos, flying on his helicopter and partying aboard his private yacht.

In 1991, Trump first faced questions about his dealings with Robert LiButti, a plump, balding and nationally famous horse breeder with an explosive temper who would later be banned from New Jersey casinos for his ties to Mafia boss John Gotti. At the time, New Jersey state regulators had launched an investigation into allegations by nine employees of one of Trump’s Atlantic City casinos, the Trump Plaza, that the hotel had repeatedly removed African-Americans and women from craps tables after LiButti, one of the highest-rolling gamblers in the city’s history, loudly complained about their presence when he was playing.

The probe resulted in a $200,000 fine against the Trump Plaza by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission for violating state anti-discrimination laws. Investigators found that LiButti had, on multiple occasions, berated blacks and women using what one state official described as the “vilest” language — including racist slurs and references to women in obscene terms — and that the Trump Plaza, in order not to lose his substantial business, sought to accommodate him by keeping the employees away from his betting tables, according to commission documents recently obtained by Yahoo News under the New Jersey Open Public Records Act.

“It was a substantial fine at the time,” said Mitchell A. Schwefel, then a New Jersey assistant attorney general who brought the state’s case against the Trump Plaza on behalf of the state Division of Gaming Enforcement. “That was a red-flag issue for us because that was conduct [by the hotel] that was not going to be tolerated.”

Trump was not held personally liable for the violations of his hotel, and there is no indication that he was ever questioned by state officials as part of their investigation. When asked about LiButti by a reporter, the casino mogul suggested he barely knew the foul-mouthed gambler. “I have heard he is a high roller, but if he was standing here in front of me, I wouldn’t know what he looked like,” Trump told the Philadelphia Inquirer in February 1991.

But Edith Creamer, LiButti’s daughter, told Yahoo News in two recent telephone interviews that Trump’s account was false and that Trump and her father knew each other quite well. “He’s a liar,” said Creamer. “Of course he knew him. I flew in the [Trump] helicopter with [Trump’s then wife] Ivana and the kids. My dad flew it up and down [to Atlantic City]. My 35th birthday party was at the Plaza and Donald was there. After the party, we went on his boat, his big yacht. I like Trump, but it pisses me off that he denies knowing my father. That hurts me.”

Asked for comment for this story, Trump, through his spokeswoman, sent this email to Yahoo News: “During the years I very successfully ran the casino business, I knew many high rollers. I assume Mr. LiButti was one of them, but I don’t recognize the name.”

Trump’s response to questions about LiButti underscores what critics say is a recurring theme in his career — a tendency to minimize or deny associations with unsavory characters with whom he has done business. Indeed, throughout his career as a real estate mogul there have been frequent allegations of interactions with reputed mob figures — something that may have been inevitable given the mob’s influence in the New York construction industry during that era. (Trump has consistently denied ever knowingly doing business with organized crime.)

However, in the case of LiButti, Creamer’s account of direct dealings between her father and Trump would appear to be corroborated by a 1991 book written by John R. O’Donnell, the former president of the Trump Plaza casino. In the book, “Trumped!: The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump — His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall,” O’Donnell recounts a meeting between Trump and LiButti aboard Trump’s private helicopter, a Super Puma, in the spring of 1988. Trump, according to O’Donnell, agreed to pay $500,000 for a racehorse named Alibi after LiButti showed him color photos of the “luxurious brown colt” and assured him he was going to be “another Secretariat.”

O’Donnell doesn’t use LiButti’s name in his book but describes him in unmistakable terms, calling the seller of Alibi a world-famous “horse broker” who was “our most lucrative player” at Trump casinos. O’Donnell, in a phone interview, confirmed to Yahoo News for the first time that the broker in question was LiButti. “Bob [LiButti] was selling him the horse, for sure,” O’Donnell said. “Everything in the book is true.”

Trump, according to O’Donnell’s account, then “insisted” that the horse be renamed D.J. Trump. But the deal blew up after the stallion grew lame from illness and Trump sought to renegotiate the purchase price, enraging LiButti and causing him to temporarily boycott Trump’s casinos, according to O’Donnell. Trump “reneged on the deal when the horse came up lame,” said O’Donnell in the phone interview. (“Mr. Trump never owned a racehorse,” said Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks in an email. “He vaguely remembers someone naming a racehorse after him.”)

Yahoo News has also obtained the full transcript of a Sept. 4, 1990, undercover New Jersey State Police tape of a conversation between LiButti and Trump’s top Atlantic City executive, Edward M. Tracy, that appears to lend further credence to Creamer’s account.

The New Jersey police had secretly wired Tracy after two reputed bookmakers for the Gambino crime family told an undercover officer that LiButti was “in Trump’s pockets.” That, police investigators concluded, was a reference to a highly lucrative contract at the Trump Plaza that LiButti had secured for his brother-in-law, Jimmy Roselli, a popular crooner once considered a rival to his childhood Hoboken neighbor, Frank Sinatra.

According to the transcript of the September 1990 meeting, LiButti makes multiple references to conversations he claimed to have had with Trump, telling Tracy, “I’m very close with him” and recounting how he had been advising Trump to unload one of his Atlantic City casinos to resolve his then highly public business problems. “I told him this right in the helicopter with, ah, Ivana and my daughter one night,” LiButti said to Tracy, according to the transcript. (Although portions of this conversation were reported on at the time, the full transcript — which was recently provided to Yahoo News by a confidential source — includes these and other references to Trump that have not been previously reported.)

In the conversation, LiButti also offered personal advice, telling Tracy that Trump needed to “get rid of the broad” — a reference to his then publicized affair with Marla Maples. And he lamented the toll that both the business and personal issues were taking on Trump at the time.

“He’s lost that aggressiveness. … Walks around like a f***ing banana. I can’t believe it’s Donald Trump. I don’t understand it,” LiButti says.

“Yeah, I know you were shocked when you saw him,” Tracy replies.

“Yeah,” says LiButti. “I can’t believe it. My hero. Broke my f***ing heart. My f***ing idol. I wanted to grow up like him.”

LiButti recounts how on one occasion, when he had blown $350,000 at the Plaza craps tables, Trump personally handed him a check — apparently as a so-called comp to keep him coming back. “As I’m checking out … they call Donald. He goes in his pocket and takes out the f***ing check and goes, ‘I want to present this to you myself.’” (When questioned about that claim at the time by reporter David Cay Johnston, then with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Trump denied it, saying, “I never gave him a check at all.”)

The secret tape recording proved to be LiButti’s undoing — but because of other comments he made that day. The gambler was then trying to pressure Tracy to pay an additional $250,000 for Roselli’s services by repeatedly invoking the name of Gotti, the head of the Gambino crime family. LiButti referred to Gotti as “my boss.” He talked about meetings he had had with Gotti and suggested that he bring him down to Trump’s Atlantic City casinos. Calling LiButti’s statements “sinister and chilling,” Assistant Attorney General Schwefel filed a motion before the Casino Control Commission to bar LiButti from all New Jersey casinos on the grounds that he was a Gotti “associate” — a request that was approved by the commission on Aug. 21, 1991.

At the time, the Casino Control Commission was also moving to fine Trump Plaza for its past efforts to placate LiButti by keeping blacks and women away from his craps tables. According to the commission’s documents on the case, LiButti flew into fits of rage whenever he lost money at the craps tables, flinging dice and gaming chips around the casino and grabbing the stick from a stickperson’s hand and breaking it in half.

He also made it clear that “he did not want women, blacks or other minorities dealing or supervising his games,” according to one filing by the state Division of Gaming Enforcement. He referred to one Trump Plaza floor person as a “dumb c***” and “dumb bitch,” another as a “Jew broad” and an African-American dealer as a “black bastard.” Finding himself playing with an African-American at his craps table, LiButti shouted, “Shoot the f***ing dice. Shoot the f***ing dice like you’re f***ing some n*****,” according to testimony in the case.

State officials argued that, rather than removing some of its employees from LiButti’s craps tables, the hotel should have removed LiButti from the casino. But it didn’t, the officials contended, because Trump’s casino had put profits above following the state’s laws against racial discrimination.

“Certainly, it would have been so much better if the casino itself had thrown LiButti out at the time that he committed these acts, but they didn’t because he was a very high roller, obviously,” Schwefel argued at a March 13, 1991, hearing on the case. “If LiButti had been a five- or 10-dollar customer, they would have thrown him right out, literally without asking any questions. The problem again is that the casino did not want to get rid of a high roller of his dimension.”

Trump’s lawyers aggressively challenged the charges of discrimination, seeking to discredit the testimony of its employees who filed complaints and arguing it had had “no formal policy” of removing African-Americans and women from LiButti’s craps tables.

“Trump Plaza is being found in violation based only on an aura of discrimination,” said Brian Spector, the lawyer for the Trump hotel. “Something may look like discrimination, feel like discrimination and even smell like discrimination, but you need discriminatory intent. It simply hasn’t been proven.”

But Casino Control Commission officials didn’t buy it, and on June 5, 1991, they doubled the gaming division’s recommended $100,000 fine to $200,000 to reflect what one commissioner contended was the “gravely serious” nature of the offense. Three months later, the commission leveled another $450,000 fine against the Trump Plaza — this time for buying LiButti nine luxury autos, including Ferraris, Bentleys and Rolls-Royces worth $1.6 million, that he then exchanged for cash, a violation of state laws at the time that barred cash comps for high rollers. Documents from the case show that the Trump Plaza also provided LiButti with other “comps” that included paying $104,338 for five European vacations and one to California; $279,978 for tickets to the Super Bowl, boxing matches and other sporting and theater events; $121,712 for jewelry; and $40,020 for Champagne that included 178 bottles of Cristal Rosé, valued at $225 a bottle.

It was only the start of LiButti’s legal problems. He was tried and convicted in 1994 for tax fraud in what federal prosecutors described as the largest case of federal income tax evasion in New Jersey history. A federal judge sentenced him to five years in prison. He died in 2014.

Creamer, LiButti’s daughter, said her father blamed Trump in part for some of his problems, apparently because Tracy agreed to be wired for the conversation in which he had invoked Gotti’s name. She declined to talk about her father’s alleged Mafia associations. “That is something I don’t want to talk about,” she said. But she strongly insisted that her father was not a racist. “He was a character,” she said. “He had a heart of gold.” While acknowledging that her father “did have a foul mouth,” she added that derogatory comments were made to everybody. “He loved black people,” she said. “He used to throw them money all the time” when he won at the craps table.

And while keenly disappointed that Trump denied knowing her father, Creamer said she is still backing him for president. “I’m voting for Trump,” she said. “He’ll change the world — I think we need that.” In fact, Creamer added, before her father died — and Trump was talking about running for president in 2011 — he expressed similar sentiments. “I’m going to vote for the SOB,” she recalled him saying.

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/35660-trump-challenged-over-past-relationship-with-racist-mob-figure

Gov. Rick Snyder Criticized for Spending 1.2 Million on Lawyers Instead of on Flint's Water Crisis 
Zak Cheney-Rice, Mic 
Cheney-Rice wrtites: "'It's beyond outrageous that Snyder wants to take 1.2 million from Michigan taxpayers to pay for defense attorneys over his involvement in the poisoning of Flint's water,' state Democratic Party Chair Brandon Dillon said in a statement Tuesday." 
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Houthis, Saudis Discuss Ending Yemen War, Sources Say 
Mohammed Ghobari and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, Reuters 
Excerpt: "Iran-allied Houthis and their Saudi foes have begun talks to try to end Yemen's war, two officials said, in what appears their most serious bid to close a theater of Saudi-Iranian rivalry deepening political tumult across the Middle East." 
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Proposed Mining Site Threatens America's Most Popular Wilderness Area 
Jenny Rowland, ThinkProgress 
Rowland writes: "On Monday, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton announced strong opposition to a proposed sulfide mine that would result in acid mine drainage and a series of tailing ponds near Minnesota’s highly-visited Boundary Waters Wilderness Area." 
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RSN: Snyder Aide Says Governor Knew About Flint Water Issues a Year Before Action Was Taken, What Life on Minimum Wage Actually Looks Like in 2016

It's Live on the HomePage Now: 
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Matt Taibbi | The Official GOP Debate Drinking Game Rules, Pt. 10 
 
Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone 
Taibbi writes: "Thursday night's GOP debate in Houston may be the last one that will have any kind of impact on the nomination. Super Tuesday is screaming down upon us, and the whole deal might be wrapped up at that point. That means this may be our last chance at a pre-apocalypse laugh." 
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Snyder Aide Says Governor Knew About Flint Water Issues a Year Before Action Was Taken 
Bryce Covert, ThinkProgress 
Covert writes: "Aides close to Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and his top lawyers discussed concerns about water quality in Flint and its impact on health as early as October 2014, a full year before the water source was switched back to Detroit and away from the Flint River, according to a review of 550 newly released emails by the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News." 
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Ex-IRS Agent: 'Very Unusual' That Trump Has Been Audited for 12 Years 
Naomi Jagoda, The Hill 
Jagoda writes: "A former Internal Revenue Service agent tells Bloomberg it's 'very unusual' that the tax returns of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump have been audited for 12 years." 
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NYPD's Alleged Quota System Comes Under Scrutiny 
Adam Lidgett, International Business Times 
Lidgett writes: "A New York judge this past week ordered that more than 850,000 dismissed summonses be unsealed in a case alleging that the officers of the New York Police Department issued criminal summonses with no probable cause as part of a quota system, which has been ruled unconstitutional, the New York Post reported Thursday." 
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What Life on Minimum Wage Actually Looks Like in 2016 
Peter Van Buren, TomDispatch 
Van Buren writes: "Finding myself plunged into the low-wage economy was a sobering, even frightening, experience that made me realize just how ignorant I had been about the lives of the people who rang me up at stores or served me food in restaurants. Though millions of adults work for minimum wage, until I did it myself I knew nothing about what that involved, which meant I knew next to nothing about twenty-first-century America." 
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In 2016, a minimum wage worker is fighting against basic math to work the hours needed to live 

above the poverty line. (photo: Spencer Platt/Getty)

hen presidential candidate Bernie Sanders talks about income inequality, and when other candidates speak about the minimum wage and food stamps, what are they really talking about?

Whether they know it or not, it’s something like this.

My working life then

A few years ago, I wrote about my experience enmeshed in the minimum-wage economy, chronicling the collapse of good people who could not earn enough money, often working 60-plus hours a week at multiple jobs, to feed their families. I saw that, in this country, people trying to make ends meet in such a fashion still had to resort to food benefit programs and charity. I saw an employee fired for stealing lunches from the break room refrigerator to feed himself. I watched as a co-worker secretly brought her two kids into the store and left them to wander alone for hours because she couldn’t afford childcare. (As it happens, 29% of low-wage employees are single parents.)

At that point, having worked at the State Department for 24 years, I had been booted out for being a whistleblower. I wasn’t sure what would happen to me next and so took a series of minimum wage jobs. Finding myself plunged into the low-wage economy was a sobering, even frightening, experience that made me realize just how ignorant I had been about the lives of the people who rang me up at stores or served me food in restaurants. Though millions of adults work for minimum wage, until I did it myself I knew nothing about what that involved, which meant I knew next to nothing about twenty-first-century America.

I was lucky. I didn’t become one of those millions of people trapped as the “working poor.” I made it out. But with all the election talk about the economy, I decided it was time to go back and take another look at where I had been, and where too many others still are.

My working life now

I found things were pretty much the same in 2016 as they were in 2012, which meant -- because there was no real improvement -- that things were actually worse.

This time around, I worked for a month and a half at a national retail chain in New York City. While mine was hardly a scientific experiment, I'd be willing to bet an hour of my minimum-wage salary ($9 before taxes) that what follows is pretty typical of the New Economy.

Just getting hired wasn't easy for this 56-year-old guy. To become a sales clerk, peddling items that were generally well under $50 a pop, I needed two previous employment references and I had to pass a credit check. Unlike some low-wage jobs, a mandatory drug test wasn’t part of the process, but there was a criminal background check and I was told drug offenses would disqualify me. I was given an exam twice, by two different managers, designed to see how I'd respond to various customer situations. In other words, anyone without some education, good English, a decent work history, and a clean record wouldn't even qualify for minimum-wage money at this chain.

And believe me, I earned that money. Any shift under six hours involved only a 15-minute break (which cost the company just $2.25). Trust me, at my age, after hours standing, I needed that break and I wasn't even the oldest or least fit employee. After six hours, you did get a 45-minute break, but were only paid for 15 minutes of it.

The hardest part of the job remained dealing with... well, some of you. Customers felt entitled to raise their voices, use profanity, and commit Trumpian acts of rudeness toward my fellow employees and me. Most of our “valued guests” would never act that way in other public situations or with their own coworkers, no less friends. But inside that store, shoppers seemed to interpret “the customer is always right” to mean that they could do any damn thing they wished. It often felt as if we were penned animals who could be poked with a stick for sport, and without penalty. No matter what was said or done, store management tolerated no response from us other than a smile and a “Yes, sir” (or ma'am).

The store showed no more mercy in its treatment of workers than did the customers. My schedule, for instance, changed constantly. There was simply no way to plan things more than a week in advance. (Forget accepting a party invitation. I'm talking about childcare and medical appointments.) If you were on the closing shift, you stayed until the manager agreed that the store was clean enough for you to go home. You never quite knew when work was going to be over and no cell phone calls were allowed to alert babysitters of any delay.

And keep in mind that I was lucky. I was holding down only one job in one store. Most of my fellow workers were trying to juggle two or three jobs, each with constantly changing schedules, in order to stitch together something like a half-decent paycheck.

In New York City, that store was required to give us sick leave only after we'd worked there for a full year -- and that was generous compared to practices in many other locales. Until then, you either went to work sick or stayed home unpaid. Unlike New York, most states do not require such a store to offer any sick leave, ever, to employees who work less than 40 hours a week. Think about that the next time your waitress coughs.

Minimum wages and minimum hours

Much is said these days about raising the minimum wage (and it should be raised), and indeed, on January 1, 2016, 13 states did raise theirs. But what sounds like good news is unlikely to have much effect on the working poor.

In New York, for instance, the minimum went from $8.75 an hour to the $9.00 I was making. New York is relatively generous. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 and 21 states require only that federal standard. Presumably to prove some grim point or other, Georgia and Wyoming officially mandate an even lower minimum wage and then unofficially require the payment of $7.25 to avoid Department of Labor penalties. Some Southern states set no basement figure, presumably for similar reasons.

Don’t forget: any minimum wage figure mentioned is before taxes. Brackets vary, but let's knock an even 10% off that hourly wage just as a reasonable guess about what is taken out of a minimum-wage worker's salary. And there are expenses to consider, too. My round-trip bus fare every day, for instance, was $5.50. That meant I worked most of my first hour for bus fare and taxes. Keep in mind that some workers have to pay for childcare as well, which means that it’s not impossible to imagine a scenario in which someone could actually come close to losing money by going to work for short shifts at minimum wage.

In addition to the fundamental problem of simply not paying people enough, there’s the additional problem of not giving them enough hours to work. The two unfortunately go together, which means that raising the minimum rate is only part of any solution to improving life in the low-wage world.

At the store where I worked for minimum wage a few years ago, for instance, hours were capped at 39 a week. The company did that as a way to avoid providing the benefits that would kick in once one became a “full time” employee. Things have changed since 2012 -- and not for the better.

Four years later, the hours of most minimum-wage workers are capped at 29. That's the threshold after which most companies with 50 or more employees are required to pay into the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) fund on behalf of their workers. Of course, some minimum wage workers get fewer than 29 hours for reasons specific to the businesses they work for.

It's math time

While a lot of numbers follow, remember that they all add up to a picture of how people around us are living every day.

In New York, under the old minimum wage system, $8.75 multiplied by 39 hours equaled $341.25 a week before taxes. Under the new minimum wage, $9.00 times 29 hours equals $261 a week. At a cap of 29 hours, the minimum wage would have to be raised to $11.77 just to get many workers back to the same level of take-home pay that I got in 2012, given the drop in hours due to the Affordable Care Act. Health insurance is important, but so is food.

In other words, a rise in the minimum wage is only half the battle; employees need enough hours of work to make a living.

About food: if a minimum wage worker in New York manages to work two jobs (to reach 40 hours a week) without missing any days due to illness, his or her yearly salary would be $18,720. In other words, it would fall well below the Federal Poverty Line of $21,775. That's food stamp territory. To get above the poverty line with a 40-hour week, the minimum wage would need to go above $10. At 29 hours a week, it would need to make it to $15 an hour. Right now, the highest minimum wage at a state level is in the District of Columbia at $11.50. As of now, no state is slated to go higher than that before 2018. (Some cities do set their own higher minimum wages.)

So add it up: The idea of raising the minimum wage (“the fight for $15”) is great, but even with that $15 in such hours-restrictive circumstances, you can't make a loaf of bread out of a small handful of crumbs. In short, no matter how you do the math, it’s nearly impossible to feed yourself, never mind a family, on the minimum wage. It's like being trapped on an M.C. Escher staircase.

The federal minimum wage hit its high point in 1968 at $8.54 in today's dollars and while this country has been a paradise in the ensuing decades for what we now call the “One Percent,” it’s been downhill for low-wage workers ever since. In fact, since it was last raised in 2009 at the federal level to $7.25 per hour, the minimum has lost about 8.1% of its purchasing power to inflation. In other words, minimum-wage workers actually make less now than they did in 1968, when most of them were probably kids earning pocket money and not adults feeding their own children.

In adjusted dollars, the minimum wage peaked when the Beatles were still together and the Vietnam War raged.

Who pays?

Many of the arguments against raising the minimum wage focus on the possibility that doing so would put small businesses in the red. This is disingenuous indeed, since 20 mega-companies dominate the minimum-wage world. Walmart alone employs 1.4 million minimum-wage workers; Yum Brands (Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC) is in second place; and McDonald's takes third. Overall, 60% of minimum-wage workers are employed by businesses not officially considered “small” by government standards, and of course carve-outs for really small businesses are possible, as was done with Obamacare.

Keep in mind that not raising wages costs you money.

Those minimum wage workers who can't make enough and need to go on food assistance? Well, Walmart isn't paying for those food stamps (now called SNAP), you are. The annual bill that states and the federal government foot for working families making poverty-level wages is $153 billion. A single Walmart Supercenter costs taxpayers between $904,542 and $1.75 million per year in public assistance money, and Walmart employees account for 18% of all food stamps issued. In other words, those everyday low prices at the chain are, in part, subsidized by your tax money.

If the minimum wage goes up, will spending on food benefits programs go down? Almost certainly. But won't stores raise prices to compensate for the extra money they will be shelling out for wages? Possibly. But don't worry -- raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would mean a Big Mac would cost all of 17 cents more.

Time theft

My retail job ended a little earlier than I had planned, because I committed time theft.

You probably don’t even know what time theft is. It may sound like something from a sci-fi novel, but minimum-wage employers take time theft seriously. The basic idea is simple enough: if they’re paying you, you’d better be working. While the concept is not invalid per se, the way it’s used by the mega-companies reveals much about how the lowest wage workers are seen by their employers in 2016.

The problem at my chain store was that its in-store cafe was a lot closer to my work area than the time clock where I had to punch out whenever I was going on a scheduled break. One day, when break time on my shift came around, I only had 15 minutes. So I decided to walk over to that cafe, order a cup of coffee, and then head for the place where I could punch out and sit down (on a different floor at the other end of the store).

We’re talking an extra minute or two, no more, but in such operations every minute is tabulated and accounted for. As it happened, a manager saw me and stepped in to tell the cafe clerk to cancel my order. Then, in front of whoever happened to be around, she accused me of committing time theft -- that is, of ordering on the clock. We’re talking about the time it takes to say, “Grande, milk, no sugar, please.” But no matter, and getting chastised on company time was considered part of the job, so the five minutes we stood there counted as paid work.

At $9 an hour, my per-minute pay rate was 15 cents, which meant that I had time-stolen perhaps 30 cents. I was, that is, being nickel and dimed to death.

Economics is about people

It seems wrong in a society as wealthy as ours that a person working full-time can't get above the poverty line. It seems no less wrong that someone who is willing to work for the lowest wage legally payable must also give up so much of his or her self-respect and dignity as a kind of tariff. Holding a job should not be a test of how to manage life as one of the working poor.

I didn't actually get fired for my time theft. Instead, I quit on the spot. Whatever the price is for my sense of self-worth, it isn’t 30 cents. Unlike most of this country’s working poor, I could afford to make such a decision. My life didn't depend on it. When the manager told a handful of my coworkers watching the scene to get back to work, they did. They couldn't afford not to.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/35422-what-life-on-minimum-wage-actually-looks-like-in-2016

American Survivors of Last Summer's ISIS Attack in Turkey Claim Authorities Hobbled Rescue Effort 
Gunay Hilal Aygun, Reader Supported News 
Aygun writes: "Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the terrorist attack on Suruc was the attitude of the police responding to it. Reader Supported News spoke with two American survivors of the Suruc attack. They describe a police response that obstructed the rescue effort." 
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Vandana Shiva | Make Monsanto Pay 
Vandana Shiva, EcoWatch 
Shiva writes: "Monsanto is in the news again. The Competition Commission of India, the country's antitrust regulator, said last week that it suspects a Monsanto joint venture abused its dominant position as a supplier of genetically modified (GMO) cotton seeds in India and has issued an order citing prima facie violation of Sections 3(4) and 4 of the Competition Act, to be investigated by Competition Commission of India's director-general." 
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RSN: Economist: Bernie Sanders' Economic Plan Would Boost Jobs, New Study Shows Global Warming May Push Temperatures Past Threshold for Human Survival

It's Live on the HomePage Now: 
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Bill McKibben | Getting Change Wrong 
 
Bill McKibben, Reader Supported News 
McKibben writes: "In the mounting, panicky attempts of elites to derail the Sanders candidacy, one strand dominates. You find it woven through every sage piece from the old-school pundits of the Times and the hip insider websites like Vox." 
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Hacker Fulfills Threat to Dump Data on 20K FBI Agents 
Katie Bo Williams, The Hill 
Williams writes: "An anonymous hacker on Monday made good on his threat to post the details of 20,000 FBI employees online, less than 24 hours after he dumped the data for 10,000 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) personnel." 
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Economist: Bernie Sanders' Economic Plan Would Boost Jobs 
teleSUR 
Excerpt: "In an interview with teleSUR English, economist Gerald Friedman said that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' economic plan would improve the lives of working class people by reducing income inequality along with taxing the country's top income earners." 
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Rick Snyder May Be Recalled for His 'Unconstitutional' Takeover of Schools 
Casey Quinlan, ThinkProgress 
Quinlan writes: "Michigan officials have approved the circulation of a petition seeking to recall Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) - but not over the Flint water crisis that has been dominating the headlines in recent weeks. Instead, the petition focuses on his decision to take control of schools." 
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How Washington's New Rich Live 
Mike Lofgren, Consortium News 
Lofgren writes: "The twin explosions of post-9/11 national security extravagance and Citizens United political spending bonanza have reshaped Washington - not only in its political outlook but physically, with this New Class preferring lavish McMansions to show off their newfound wealth." 
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The Deadly Treatment of Refugees in Europe 
Aleksandar Hemon, Rolling Stone 
Hemon writes: "My first cousin Ljilja is married to a man named Muhamed. They used to live in Bijeljina, a Bosnian border town overrun at the start of the 1992 war by the Serb troops gunning to cleanse the country of its Muslims." 
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New Study Shows Global Warming May Push Temperatures Past Threshold for Human Survival 
Cheryl Katz, National Geographic 
Katz writes: "If greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, rising temperatures and humidity wrought by global warming could expose hundreds of millions of people worldwide to potentially lethal heat stress by 2060, a new report suggests." 
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MICHIGAN Tea Baggers are a NATIONAL JOKE!

Koch Sock Puppet and Eco-terrorist Gov. Rick Snyder (R-MI) poisoned FLINT MICHIGAN.... 

please remember to thank the Dirty Energy Koch Brothers and their ilk for putting the Clowns in office! 

The bill makes it a felony punished by up to 15 years in prison...

Instead of Helping Flint, Michigan Republicans 

Just Passed a Bill That Makes Anal Sex Illegal

Up to 8,000 children in Flint, Michigan have potentially been poisoned 

by their own water supply, and so the Michigan Senate has bravely 

come together to push…

USUNCUT.COM

Michigan is a NATIONAL JOKE!

Michigan Senate Passes Bill Making Consensual Oral And Anal Sex A Felony - The Intellectualist

From The New Civil Rights Movement: ‘…The Michigan Senate has passed a bill that effectively reaffirms the state’s unconstitutional law making sodomy a…

THEINTELLECTUALIST.CO|BY THE INTELLECTUALIST

RSN: Erin Brockovich to Stephen Colbert: 'Flint, Michigan Is the Tip of the Iceberg'

Erin Brockovich explains the Flint water crisis to Stephen Colbert. (photo: The Late Show 
With Stephen Colbert)

Erin Brockovich to Stephen Colbert: 'Flint, Michigan Is the Tip of the Iceberg'

By Cole Mellino, EcoWatch

30 January 16

nvironmental activist Erin Brockovich appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to talk about the Flint water crisis. Brockovich said members of the Flint community reached out to her a year ago because they were concerned about how their water looked, tasted and smelled. She sent a team of experts to Flint to investigate and even drafted a protocol for how the city should deal with the problem.

She explained to the audience what went wrong in Flint and what the city needs to do to provide residents with potable water. Colbert then asked Brockovich if Flint was the tip of the “leadberg.” Are there other communities facing similar problems?, he asked.

Brockovich answered with a resounding yes. “I can tell you that Flint, Michigan is the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “I can tell you for certain that this is a national crisis that we are not getting ready to face. The crisis is already here. Even since Flint has hit the national stage, we’ve found out that Sebring, Ohio has the same problem … The same thing is happening in Louisiana, and we’re just now hearing rumors—I haven’t verified it before I came out—we’re having the same situation in Wisconsin.”

Watch the interview with Brockovich here:

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/34895-erin-brockovich-to-stephen-colbert-flint-michigan-is-the-tip-of-the-iceberg