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This says it all...

Wal Mart wins

The stacked right wing Supreme Court voted in a 5-4 decision in favor of the corporate giant Wal Mart.

"A decade ago, a woman named Betty Dukes filed a lawsuit against her employer, Wal-Mart Stores, alleging the company had blocked her efforts to advance. The case mushroomed into a class-action lawsuit involving 1.5 million female employees and alleging a pervasive pattern of gender discrimination. It also became one of the most closely watched business cases in years. 

The justices sided with Wal-Mart. They unanimously agreed that the women couldn't seek back pay in this case, because the plaintiffs' lawyers had used the wrong legal standard for qualifying for monetary claims. The court's conservative majority also decided 5-4 that the class was too big to fairly evaluate. "

Too big to be held accountable?

Significantly, the majority never ruled on the fairness of Wal-Mart's employment practices, which have earned plenty of public criticism over the years. The court never decided whether Wal-Mart fostered a corporate culture that resulted in lower pay and fewer promotions for women, either. The justices simply put the brakes on the idea that 1.5 million women could automatically share the same class-action status as potential victims of discrimination. 

These women need more in common than their gender, the court said. They need the smoking gun of a specific corporate policy -- or they need to form smaller and more manageable groups of plaintiffs than 1.5 million women (including hundreds of managers) working in different jobs for different lengths of time at 3,400 stores. 

Legal analysts and scholars offered no immediate consensus about the impact of this case. It will likely take years and additional cases for its full impact to be known. For now, we'll say this: If the court becomes openly hostile to plaintiffs in class-action lawsuits, Congress may need to intervene. A central purpose of class-action litigation is to empower a group to seek justice when the individuals of that group lack the means to do so. Ordinary citizens need to retain the ability to sue collectively, whether they are consumers relying on safe products, patients depending on good medicine or low-wage employees hoping for a fair shake at work. 

No big surprise

SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, 

C. J., and KENNEDY, THOMAS, and ALITO, JJ., joined, and in which GINS- 

BURG, BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., joined as to Parts I and III. 

GINSBURG, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, 

in which BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., joined. 

We have a lockstep Supreme court, in which Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas & Alito

the right wrong wing faction that consistently votes in favor of corporations. 

Of course the corporation is not going to have a published policy that discriminates against women, the cases & discrimination just happened. 

The plaintiffs are free to go after Wal Mart in individual lawsuits, as opposed to class action, but that is a real David VS Goliath situation. 

Because a person working for Wal Mart, making low low wages can ill afford a lengthy lawsuit against a huge corporation that has it's own, in-house legal department. 

Walmart has 8,970 stores in 15 countries, under 55 different names. The company operates under its own name in the United States, including the 50 states. It also operates under its own name in Puerto Rico. It operates in Mexico as Walmex, in the United Kingdom as Asda, in Japan as Seiyu, and in India as Best Price. It has wholly owned operations in Argentina, Brazil, and Canada. 

 Wal-Mart's EEOC filings showed that female employees made up 65% of Wal-Mart's hourly paid workforce, but only 33% of its management. Just 35% of its store managers were women, whereas 57% were at comparable retailers.

I have to wonder what will happen with Betty Dukes  Wal Mart job after this Supreme Court ruling? This would have been the largest sex discrimination lawsuit in U.S. history. 

Last week, Dukes was again organizing shopping carts and chatting with customers as a greeter at the Wal-Mart on Loveridge Road, where she has worked for 17 years.

The woman behind the lawsuit started as a part-time cashier with the Pittsburg store in 1994.

She became a full-time cashier a few months later, then was promoted to customer-service manager in 1997.

Dukes said she noticed a pattern in which men were trained for the jobs she wanted while women were often ignored. She said she later learned that a male coworker was making 50 cents per hour more than she was for doing the same job, even though he had worked at Wal-Mart for a much shorter time.

Her unhappiness with some of the Pittsburg store's managers boiled over in 1999, when she filed a complaint against them after she was demoted to cashier.

"If the justices rule against the class action, attorneys will still take Dukes' case to trial", Seligman said.

Despite the acrimony that led to the suit, Dukes said she had always enjoyed working at Wal-Mart.

She said she would be happy when the litigation was over.

"When we first filed the suit, I thought it might go on for seven years and [Wal-Mart] would settle," she said. "We didn't take Wal-Mart to the Supreme Court; they took us."

The case has gone on for 10 years. 

While that bright orb is shining in the sky....

Yea, well if you don't hear from me too much, it is because I am 

Painting the exterior of the house.

No not in rainbow motif.... but that is an interesting concept!

Here is a joke for you:

A woman approaches a man drinking a beer at the bar. 

She propositions him: 

"For $100 bucks, I'll do anything you want"

He thinks about it for a moment, then

he jumps up, slaps $100 on the bar and says

"Paint my house!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile, I seem to be on a Jackson Browne kick these days so enjoy

some vintage "Werewolves in London" w Warren Zevon

J Browne Lives in the Balance

War in Libya & the Constitution

The following is a quote from Daniel Ellsberg (leaked the Pentagon Papers that revealed the Vietnam War was not winnable):

" Fortunately there are a few Congresspersons, like Dennis Kucinich and Barbara Lee, Walter Jones and Ron Paul who got that message the first time, even if the Republican and Democratic leadership hasn't, yet.

On June 23, 1971, in an interview with CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, you said,  "I think the lesson is that the people of this country can’t afford to let the President run the country by himself, even foreign affairs, without the help of Congress, without the help of the public. I think we cannot let the officials of the Executive Branch determine for us what it is that the public needs to know about how well and how they are discharging their functions." How concerned are you that elected officials haven't learned those lessons?

Leaders in the Executive branch–in every country– know what they're doing, and why they're doing it, and they always want to stay in office and keep on running things with as little interference from Congress, the public and the courts as possible: which means, with as much secrecy as they can manage.  So I'm not exactly concerned that they're still at it (which is why I'm still at what I do), since that is so predictable, in every government, tyrannical or "democratic."

 Our Founders sought to prevent this. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, for the first time in constitutional history,  put the decision to go to war (beyond repelling sudden attacks) exclusively in the hands of Congress, not the president.  But every president since  Harry Truman in Korea–as the Pentagon Papers demonstrated up through LBJ, but beyond them to George W. Bush and Barack Obama–has violated the spirit and even the letter of that section of the Constitution (along with some others) they each swore to preserve, protect and defend.

However, as has been pointed out repeatedly, that no president has so blatantly violated the constitutional division of war powers as  President Obama in his ongoing attack on Libya, without a nod even to the statutory War Powers Act, that post-Pentagon Papers effort by Congress to recapture something of the role assigned exclusively to it by the Constitution.

This open disregard of a ruling statute (regardless of his supposed feelings about its constitutionality, which Obama has not even bothered to express) is clearly an impeachable offense, though it will certainly not lead to impeachment–given the current complicity of the leaders of both parties–any more than President George W. Bush's misleading Congress into his crime against the peace, aggression, in Iraq, or President Johnson's lies to obtain the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

As Lincoln put it, the alternative approach (which we have actually followed in the last sixty years) "places our President where kings have always stood."  And the upshot of that undue, unquestioning trust in the president and his Executive branch is: smart people get us into stupid (and wrongful) wars, and their equally smart successors won't get us out of them.

Either we the people will press elected officials in Congress–on pain of losing their jobs–to take up their Constitutional responsibilities once again and to end by defunding our illegal, unjustifiable (and now, financially insupportable) military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and air attacks on Pakistan, Libya and Yemen: or those bloody stalemates will continue indefinitely."

Read the entire article by clicking here. 

Some of the exact reasons why I voted for & supported Barack Obama, were that he expressed his opposition to war, his promise to always exhaust diplomatic options before ever considering going to war, and that he was a constitutional scholar.

I expected that he would strictly adhere to the Constitution, unlike his predecessor George W. Bush. However now, two years into his presidency, he has us in more wars, which means further financial trouble, but also making decisions to go to war without consulting with Congress.

Saying this is just a NATO alliance is simply putting lipstick on a pig. Military presence, dropping bombs & other acts of aggression are acts of war-- they would like to define it as "as long as there are not boots on the ground, it is not officially war."

If it is destructive like war.
It puts the people in the  Military's lives at risk like war.
Costs billions & requires many resources like war.

Well, you understand.
President Obama took us into war with Libya, boots on the ground or not, and this is a dangerous precedent.

• In a separate interview for "Meet the Press," Gates acknowledged that Libya does not represent a clear threat to U.S. national security interests, but said that other considerations make the military mission important.

"I don't think it's vital interest of the United States, but we clearly have interests there," Gates said. "And it's a part of the region which is a vital interest for the United States." (See photo to the right for what I suspect those "interests" are. )

• Estimates are that about $1 billion has already been spent on an undeclared war in Libya, some would say only hundreds of millions, and that that will diminish in the days ahead," Lugar said. "But [who] knows how long this goes on? And furthermore, who has really budgeted for Libya at all? I have not really heard the administration come forward saying that, 'We're going to have to devote these funds, folks, and therefore it's something else we'll have to go or it simply adds to the deficit.'"

• Back door spending:

Sen. Lugar said: "There have to be objectives and a plan and an agreement that we're prepared to devote the military forces but also the money," Lugar said. "It makes no sense in the front room, where in Congress we are debating seemingly every day the deficits, the debt ceiling situation coming up, the huge economic problems we have -- but in the back room we are spending money on a military situation in Libya."

For all of the above reasons, I do think Congress must take action to correct President Obama's huge mistake.
On the adherence to the Constitution front, on the need for check & balance process, so no President can decide to bring the country to war by his/herself, my personal opposition to war, and for obvious financial reasons, bringing the US to war in LIbya must be stopped. 

Some catchin' up to do.....

I have been out of town, lollygagging, chilling, somewhat abandoning my news junkie ways- listening instead to the ocean & babbling brooks, deep in the rainforest. 

Great to enjoy nature & tune in to the all ocean all the time channel. 

Of course the news cycles churned on, whether or not I was paying attention. 

So I will throw out some perspectives on recent news items, for what they are worth!

The Weiner situation: Weiner had been a real voice for progressives & I am sorry he resigned. Don;t get me wrong- what he did was stupid & out of line. I would not blame his wife for keeping the Weiner dog on a very short leash ..... but what he did was not illegal, and other politicians have done worse-- from Bill Clinton's Lewinsky affair, spewing semen in the Oval offie (actual sex) & lying about it, to Vitter's follies w prostitutes, and the GOP forgive & forget handling of that matter. Again actual sex, and in Vitter's case, breaking the law. Vitter remains in the Senate, with full Seniority & committee memberships. 

I hate the double standard, because they claimed he was otherwise doing such a good job. If blow jobs  for the president & paying for sex w prostitutes is OK & allows them to keep then jobs, then "Fruit-of the-Loom-gate" seems tame in comparison. 

I wish Weiner would have waited it out a few weeks to let the topic settle down. 

The War Act situation: For me, this is where partisanship ends. I don't care what party a politician is in, I expect full accountability & compliance with the check & balance system that is supposed to be in place. I don't want a president to feel OK with just deciding to engage in wars on his/her own. 

It was a horrific precedent G. W. Bush set, when he decided to go it alone, and act first, get permission later, and the general trashing of the Constitution. Besides loathing his Dictator like decision making, he opened the door for others to do the same. 

What is the opposite of the gift that keeps giving?

The hell that keeps looming?

Long after his terms are over, those wars are still going on, and besides bringing the country into financial ruin, we seem to be stuck in perpetual wars. 

It sucks to be a Progressive in America right now.
At best Obama is a conservative.
At worst he's turned into a Nobel Peace prize winning war monger- to the point I can't keep track of how many wars we are in right now....

Iraq
Afghanistan
Libya
Covert war in Yemen
Ever increasing attacks on Pakistan

On that front, Obama has been a total disappointment, breaking his promise to exhaust all diplomatic options before ever going to war. I voted for Obama to get us OUT of the 2 wars Bush 2 got us into,.... now we are in more wars than the Bush 2 era. 

There is now legal pressure for Obama to comply with the War Powers act, re Libya, from both Democrats & Republicans.

A Chickenhawk is defined:

A politician or other person who promotes war without having had any personal experience of it; especially those who have avoided the experience.
	chickenhawk
	Any person who is a proponent of a war while not enlisting and going off to fight in said war. A kind of hypocrite. Really, a chickenhawk is one who says: "it's okay for other mother's sons and children's fathers to go off and get shot, dismembered and incinerated, but not me or my family." Enough with the wars already. There is now an entire generation of U.S. children who have only known their country to be at war, their whole lives. It really bothers me that while Congress falls all over themselves to make tough budget cuts (mostly to entitlement programs that we the people already paid into), and ignore the big ticket items- 60% going into paying for all these wars. It is estimated the US will have spent $1 billion by September in Libya alone. Don't tell me I have to wait till age 67 to retire so we can have as many wars as the president decides.

It's all Obama's Fault-- the economy--I don't buy the repug claims that Obama screwed up the economy. Bush 2 did that & with the help of many of the repugs running for office now. They racked up the (then) $13 trillion debt, and have since then have a newfound fiscal conservancy, and moral obligation to future generations. (Where was that morality $13 trillion ago???)

The economy is similar to the sex scandal situation... lots of finger pointing, and heavy reliance on our short memory spans. 

The republicans got us into this financial mess. You can't create a $13 trillion dollar debt, then turn around & blame the next guy to take office. Well, I stand corrected, this is ust what they are doing-- but we've been paying attention. We know the truth & we need to call them out on it. 

Same for the sex capades. 

If the sexting Dem needs to resign, then so does the guy who does business with prostitutes. We should not have a different set of standards & rules for the different parties. 

Let us not be distracted!

Blackbird

Continuing on my musical whim.

I don't mind

Some Beatles for your listening pleasure.