July 3, 2011
I wonder if there are still people who think that what's happened over the past year hasn't had a deleterious effect on women's rights. What's happened over the past year has not only halted all advances for women's rights, it is eroding them at a very fast rate and with very big consequences.
Here's an article from page 5B of the June 21, 2011 issue of The Burlington Free Press:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Wal-Mart sex-bias case barred
U.S. Supreme Court blocks class action suit by female workers
by Mark Sherman: The Associated Press
Washington: The Supreme Court blocked the largest sex-discrimination lawsuit in U.S. History on Monday, siding with Wal-Mart and against up to 1.6 million female workers in a decision that makes it harder to mount a large-scale bias claim against the nation's other huge companies, too.
The justices all agreed that the lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. could not proceed as a class action in its current form, reversing a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. By a 5-4 vote along ideological lines, the court said that there were too many women in too many jobs at Wal-Mart to form one lawsuit.
“Because respondents provide no convincing proof of a companywide discriminatory pay and promotion policy, we have concluded that they have not established the existence of any common question,” Justice Anthony Scalia said in his majority opinion.
Theodore Boutrous Jr., Wal-Mart's lawyer, said the decision also would affect pending class-action claims against Costco and others. Companies as varied as the big Wall Street firm Goldman-Sachs & Co., electronics giant Toshiba America Inc., and Cigna Healthcare Inc. also face class-action claims from women they employ.
“This is an extremely important victory not just for Wal-Mart, but for all companies that do business in the U.S.,” Boutrous said.
The assessment was similar on the other side of the issue. Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, said “The court has told employers that they can rest easy, knowing that the bigger and more powerful they are, the less likely their employees will be able to join together to secure their rights.”
One case at a time
With 2.1 million workers in more than 8,000 stores worldwide, Wal-Mart could have faced billions of dollars in damages if it had had to answer claims by the huge group of women.
Now, the handful of employees who brought the case may pursue their claims on their own, with much less money at stake and less pressure on Wal-Mart to settle. Two of the named plaintiffs, Christine Kwapnoski and Betty Dukes, vowed to continue their fight, even as they expressed disappointment about the ruling.
“We still are determined to go forward to present our case in court. We believe we will prevail there,” said Dukes, a greeter at the Wal-Mart in Pittsburgh, Calif.
“All I have to say is when I go back to work tomorrow, I'm going to let them know we are still fighting,” said Kwapnoski, an assistant manager at Sam's Club in Concord, Calif. Both women spoke on a conference call with reporters.
The women's lawyers said they were considering filing thousands of discrimination claims against Wal-Mart, but they acknowledged the court had dealt a fatal blow to their plan.
In a statement, Wal-Mart said, “The court today unanimously rejected class certification and, as the majority made clear, the plaintiffs' claims were worlds away from showing a companywide discriminatory pay and promotion policy.”
No common element
The high court's majority agreed with Wal-Mart's argument that being forced to defend the treatment of female employees regardless of the jobs they hold or where they work is unfair.
Scalia said there needed to be common elements tying together “literally millions of employment decisions at once.” He said that in the lawsuit against the nation's largest private employer, “That is entirely absent here.”
Justice Ruth Bader Gainsburg, writing for the court's four liberal justices, said there was more than enough to unite the claims.
“Wal-Mart's delegation of discretion over pay and promotions is a policy uniform throughout all stores,” Gainsburg said. The other women on the court, Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, and Justice Stephen Breyer joined Ginsburg's opinion.
Clear divide
Business interests, including nearly two dozen large companies, lined up with Wal-Mart, while civil rights, women's and consumer groups sided with the women plaintiffs.
Both sides painted the case as extremely consequential. The business community said that a ruling for the women would lead to a flood of class-action lawsuits based on vague evidence. Supporters of the women suggested a decision in favor of Wal-mart could remove a valuable weapon for fighting all sorts of discrimination.
The Wal-Mart lawsuit, citing what are now dated figures from 2001, said that women are grossly underrepresented among managers, holding just 14 percent of store manager positions compared with more than 80 percent of lower-ranking supervisory jobs that are paid by the hour. Wal-Mart responded that women in its retail stores made up two-thirds of all employees and two-thirds of all managers in 2001.
The company also has said its policies prohibit discrimination and that it has taken steps since the suit was filed to address problems, including posting job openings electronically."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 3, 2011
Here's the article that's below the article I've just transcribed from the June 21, 2011 Burlington Free Press, on the same page, 5B:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Vast expansion of Web domain names approved
Singapore: Internet minders voted Monday to allow virtually unlimited new domain names based on themes as varied as company brands, entertainment and political causes, in the system's biggest shake-up since it started 26 years ago.
Groups able to pay the $185,000 application can petition next year for new updates to “.com” and “.net” with website suffixes using nearly any word in any language, including in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers decided at a meeting in Singapore.
“This is the start of a whole new phase for the Internet,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of ICANN's board of directors. “Unless there is a good reason to restrain it, innovation should be allowed to run free.”
ICANN's decision culminates six years of negotiations and is the biggest change to the system since “.com” made its debut in 1984. The expansion plan had been delayed largely because of concerns that new suffixes could infringe on trademarks and copyrights.
High-profile entertainment, consumer goods and financial services companies will likely be among the first to apply for their own domain name in a bid to protect their brands, experts said.
The surge in domains should help alleviate some of the overlap of names in the most popular suffixes, especially “.com”, which has 94 million sites registered.
Analysts said they expect between 500 to 1,000 new domain names, mostly companies and products, but also cities and generic names such as “.bank” or “.hotel.”"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To the left of that article, there's a small caption that says:
“Oil price
Benchmark crude for August delivery rose 23 cents to settle at $93.63 per barrel Monday on the New York Mercantile Exchange”
Below the article is the movie section. In the movie section, there are two large ads. The first one says:
“OSCARS
BISTRO & BAR
NOW OPEN
Mon-Fri at 4:30 /Sat & Sun at 11:30 a.m.
Supporting Local Farms
Local is Good & Tastes Better”
The second ad says:
“CARS 2
OSCARS VIP PACKAGE
JUNE 25 11:30
PRICE FIX
LUNCH/ENTERTAINMENT
MEET RACE CAR DRIVER
CODY BLAKE
PROJECTION BOOTH TOUR
ADULT $25.00/CHILD $19.00
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 3, 2011
Two of the titles from the top of the front page of the entire newspaper are:
"Little Opposition
Two more votes in favor of next week's
Burlington Electric bond vote
Comment & Debate Page 4A"
and
"Building Coffers
Gov. Peter Shumlin is on fundraising trip
vt. Buzz Page 5A"
The article on page 4A is about the Burlington Electric Department, whose initials BED have been used more than once by the Burlington Free Press as part of the harassment and pedophilic imagery and innuendo. The article begins:
"More on the bond vote for Burlington Electric
Members of the Burlington Electric Commission continue to voice their support for Burlington Electric Department measures placed before city residents for the vote June 28."
Next to the article is a picture of a truck in water, with a caption that says:
"Burlington Electric Department workers remove old power lines May 24 along the flooded waterfront"
The opposite page, 5A, has the article about Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin. It says:
"Shumlin holding campaign fundraisers"
Here are a couple of excerpts from that article:
"It won't be long before we can know just how much cash Shumlin has accumulated. Campaign-finance reports for candidates in state-wide offices who have raised or spent at least $500 are due July 15.
After that, Vermonters will go a long time not knowing how much money candidates have raised and from whom. The next reporting deadline is July 16, 2012. There was talk of making more frequent deadlines, but that legislation didn't pass this year."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 3, 2011
In the same issue, from June 21, 2011, the front page of the sports section, on page 7A begins with this article:
"Thomas gets new look
Former UVM star shaves beard for charity, reveals Cup plans"
Below that, there's an article that begins with a picture of baseball players and the caption:
"Lake Monsters Home Opener"
The article then starts:
"Vermont enjoys opener
Perfect night capped with 8-6 victory"
That's a follow-up article from the front page of the Burlington Free Press, which showed a little girl at the baseball game, holding a bag of popcorn that had the words "Fresh" and "Pop" closest to her face.
Opposite page 7A, on page 6A, there's another follow-up article to an article called "75 percent of nuke sites have leaked tritium" from the front page of the whole newspaper.
The article on page 6A has the title:
"TRITIUM: Leaks likely to increase."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 3, 2011
--The "Turntight Technology" ad that I talked about the other day on WordPress is in the front window of Sears on the road from Barre to Montpelier.
--The Ford dealer on the same road has had a red boat on its front lawn for several weeks. The boat says "Seabreeze 210" on it, but it has been covered so that it reads "Seabreeze 21."
What is a boat doing on the front lawn of a car dealership?
The Ford dealer's idea has been copied by Utton's Automotives, a couple of miles father along the road. There is now also a red boat on that lawn, with the name "Regal."
Copyright L. Kochman July 3, 2011 @10:00 p.m.
I've been meaning to go through that newspaper for a while; about a week ago, I absolutely had to take a break. I couldn't do the reading, thinking, taking notes or any of it anymore, for a while.
I wonder if there are still people who think that what's happened over the past year hasn't had a deleterious effect on women's rights. What's happened over the past year has not only halted all advances for women's rights, it is eroding them at a very fast rate and with very big consequences.
Here's an article from page 5B of the June 21, 2011 issue of The Burlington Free Press:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Wal-Mart sex-bias case barred
U.S. Supreme Court blocks class action suit by female workers
by Mark Sherman: The Associated Press
Washington: The Supreme Court blocked the largest sex-discrimination lawsuit in U.S. History on Monday, siding with Wal-Mart and against up to 1.6 million female workers in a decision that makes it harder to mount a large-scale bias claim against the nation's other huge companies, too.
The justices all agreed that the lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. could not proceed as a class action in its current form, reversing a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. By a 5-4 vote along ideological lines, the court said that there were too many women in too many jobs at Wal-Mart to form one lawsuit.
“Because respondents provide no convincing proof of a companywide discriminatory pay and promotion policy, we have concluded that they have not established the existence of any common question,” Justice Anthony Scalia said in his majority opinion.
Theodore Boutrous Jr., Wal-Mart's lawyer, said the decision also would affect pending class-action claims against Costco and others. Companies as varied as the big Wall Street firm Goldman-Sachs & Co., electronics giant Toshiba America Inc., and Cigna Healthcare Inc. also face class-action claims from women they employ.
“This is an extremely important victory not just for Wal-Mart, but for all companies that do business in the U.S.,” Boutrous said.
The assessment was similar on the other side of the issue. Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, said “The court has told employers that they can rest easy, knowing that the bigger and more powerful they are, the less likely their employees will be able to join together to secure their rights.”
One case at a time
With 2.1 million workers in more than 8,000 stores worldwide, Wal-Mart could have faced billions of dollars in damages if it had had to answer claims by the huge group of women.
Now, the handful of employees who brought the case may pursue their claims on their own, with much less money at stake and less pressure on Wal-Mart to settle. Two of the named plaintiffs, Christine Kwapnoski and Betty Dukes, vowed to continue their fight, even as they expressed disappointment about the ruling.
“We still are determined to go forward to present our case in court. We believe we will prevail there,” said Dukes, a greeter at the Wal-Mart in Pittsburgh, Calif.
“All I have to say is when I go back to work tomorrow, I'm going to let them know we are still fighting,” said Kwapnoski, an assistant manager at Sam's Club in Concord, Calif. Both women spoke on a conference call with reporters.
The women's lawyers said they were considering filing thousands of discrimination claims against Wal-Mart, but they acknowledged the court had dealt a fatal blow to their plan.
In a statement, Wal-Mart said, “The court today unanimously rejected class certification and, as the majority made clear, the plaintiffs' claims were worlds away from showing a companywide discriminatory pay and promotion policy.”
No common element
The high court's majority agreed with Wal-Mart's argument that being forced to defend the treatment of female employees regardless of the jobs they hold or where they work is unfair.
Scalia said there needed to be common elements tying together “literally millions of employment decisions at once.” He said that in the lawsuit against the nation's largest private employer, “That is entirely absent here.”
Justice Ruth Bader Gainsburg, writing for the court's four liberal justices, said there was more than enough to unite the claims.
“Wal-Mart's delegation of discretion over pay and promotions is a policy uniform throughout all stores,” Gainsburg said. The other women on the court, Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, and Justice Stephen Breyer joined Ginsburg's opinion.
Clear divide
Business interests, including nearly two dozen large companies, lined up with Wal-Mart, while civil rights, women's and consumer groups sided with the women plaintiffs.
Both sides painted the case as extremely consequential. The business community said that a ruling for the women would lead to a flood of class-action lawsuits based on vague evidence. Supporters of the women suggested a decision in favor of Wal-mart could remove a valuable weapon for fighting all sorts of discrimination.
The Wal-Mart lawsuit, citing what are now dated figures from 2001, said that women are grossly underrepresented among managers, holding just 14 percent of store manager positions compared with more than 80 percent of lower-ranking supervisory jobs that are paid by the hour. Wal-Mart responded that women in its retail stores made up two-thirds of all employees and two-thirds of all managers in 2001.
The company also has said its policies prohibit discrimination and that it has taken steps since the suit was filed to address problems, including posting job openings electronically."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 3, 2011
Here's the article that's below the article I've just transcribed from the June 21, 2011 Burlington Free Press, on the same page, 5B:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Vast expansion of Web domain names approved
Singapore: Internet minders voted Monday to allow virtually unlimited new domain names based on themes as varied as company brands, entertainment and political causes, in the system's biggest shake-up since it started 26 years ago.
Groups able to pay the $185,000 application can petition next year for new updates to “.com” and “.net” with website suffixes using nearly any word in any language, including in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers decided at a meeting in Singapore.
“This is the start of a whole new phase for the Internet,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of ICANN's board of directors. “Unless there is a good reason to restrain it, innovation should be allowed to run free.”
ICANN's decision culminates six years of negotiations and is the biggest change to the system since “.com” made its debut in 1984. The expansion plan had been delayed largely because of concerns that new suffixes could infringe on trademarks and copyrights.
High-profile entertainment, consumer goods and financial services companies will likely be among the first to apply for their own domain name in a bid to protect their brands, experts said.
The surge in domains should help alleviate some of the overlap of names in the most popular suffixes, especially “.com”, which has 94 million sites registered.
Analysts said they expect between 500 to 1,000 new domain names, mostly companies and products, but also cities and generic names such as “.bank” or “.hotel.”"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To the left of that article, there's a small caption that says:
“Oil price
Benchmark crude for August delivery rose 23 cents to settle at $93.63 per barrel Monday on the New York Mercantile Exchange”
Below the article is the movie section. In the movie section, there are two large ads. The first one says:
“OSCARS
BISTRO & BAR
NOW OPEN
Mon-Fri at 4:30 /Sat & Sun at 11:30 a.m.
Supporting Local Farms
Local is Good & Tastes Better”
The second ad says:
“CARS 2
OSCARS VIP PACKAGE
JUNE 25 11:30
PRICE FIX
LUNCH/ENTERTAINMENT
MEET RACE CAR DRIVER
CODY BLAKE
PROJECTION BOOTH TOUR
ADULT $25.00/CHILD $19.00
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 3, 2011
Two of the titles from the top of the front page of the entire newspaper are:
"Little Opposition
Two more votes in favor of next week's
Burlington Electric bond vote
Comment & Debate Page 4A"
and
"Building Coffers
Gov. Peter Shumlin is on fundraising trip
vt. Buzz Page 5A"
The article on page 4A is about the Burlington Electric Department, whose initials BED have been used more than once by the Burlington Free Press as part of the harassment and pedophilic imagery and innuendo. The article begins:
"More on the bond vote for Burlington Electric
Members of the Burlington Electric Commission continue to voice their support for Burlington Electric Department measures placed before city residents for the vote June 28."
Next to the article is a picture of a truck in water, with a caption that says:
"Burlington Electric Department workers remove old power lines May 24 along the flooded waterfront"
The opposite page, 5A, has the article about Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin. It says:
"Shumlin holding campaign fundraisers"
Here are a couple of excerpts from that article:
"It won't be long before we can know just how much cash Shumlin has accumulated. Campaign-finance reports for candidates in state-wide offices who have raised or spent at least $500 are due July 15.
After that, Vermonters will go a long time not knowing how much money candidates have raised and from whom. The next reporting deadline is July 16, 2012. There was talk of making more frequent deadlines, but that legislation didn't pass this year."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 3, 2011
In the same issue, from June 21, 2011, the front page of the sports section, on page 7A begins with this article:
"Thomas gets new look
Former UVM star shaves beard for charity, reveals Cup plans"
Below that, there's an article that begins with a picture of baseball players and the caption:
"Lake Monsters Home Opener"
The article then starts:
"Vermont enjoys opener
Perfect night capped with 8-6 victory"
That's a follow-up article from the front page of the Burlington Free Press, which showed a little girl at the baseball game, holding a bag of popcorn that had the words "Fresh" and "Pop" closest to her face.
Opposite page 7A, on page 6A, there's another follow-up article to an article called "75 percent of nuke sites have leaked tritium" from the front page of the whole newspaper.
The article on page 6A has the title:
"TRITIUM: Leaks likely to increase."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 3, 2011
--The "Turntight Technology" ad that I talked about the other day on WordPress is in the front window of Sears on the road from Barre to Montpelier.
--The Ford dealer on the same road has had a red boat on its front lawn for several weeks. The boat says "Seabreeze 210" on it, but it has been covered so that it reads "Seabreeze 21."
What is a boat doing on the front lawn of a car dealership?
The Ford dealer's idea has been copied by Utton's Automotives, a couple of miles father along the road. There is now also a red boat on that lawn, with the name "Regal."
Copyright L. Kochman July 3, 2011 @10:00 p.m.
I've been meaning to go through that newspaper for a while; about a week ago, I absolutely had to take a break. I couldn't do the reading, thinking, taking notes or any of it anymore, for a while.