Look, I understand that conservatives disagree on Libya, and more generally over how expansive our foreign policy should be. But this name-calling is inappropriate…Oh, that’s a good one.
Here, Krikorian helped to amplify the “anchor baby” threat (I would say that constitutes name calling); here, he called Obama an “effete vacillator”; here, he called an immigration rally an "illegal-alien-palooza"; and here, he said Haiti is a “basket case” because “it wasn’t colonized long enough.”
Once more, a conservative looks into the mirror and sees everyone and everything but himself.
The misconceptions about this case begin with the identities of the real combatants. On NPR's Marketplace this week, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick described the plaintiffs as "1.5 million female employees of Wal-Mart who are trying to file a class-action suit." But, of course, most of those women are not "trying" to do anything of the sort.The individual who wrote this really should acquaint himself with what a class action lawsuit truly is, which is an action by “any member of a class of plaintiffs” (the fact that the suit was brought on behalf of 1.5 million female employees although it wasn’t initiated by each of those employees doesn’t automatically make it invalid).
Rather, a relative handful of them have hired lawyers, and those lawyers daringly sought to get themselves declared the legal representatives of the other 1.496 million (or however many), who have expressed no inclination whatsoever to sue.
I took a little while to think this over, though, because, though this is yet another case of the High Court of Hangin’ Judge JR doing the bidding of its corporate masters, I wasn’t sure about this action on the legal merits, though I see plenty of grounds for it.
Jonathan Turley can do a much better job of explaining it, and I think he does so here…
As anticipated, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of Wal-Mart in an important workplace discrimination case. The Court divided 5-4 in adopting more stringent standards for future cases. From the outset, I viewed this as an extremely bad case that would likely make bad law for those fighting workplace discrimination. It now has.Yeah, leave to Scalia as usual, who seemed to think the plaintiffs couldn’t establish a standard of discrimination “on a classwide basis.” And for good measure, Scalia and his pals also made it damn difficult for a plaintiff to recover lost wages as a result of a class action (the four dissenting judges, Ginsburg, Kagan, Breyer and Sotomayor, believing the Wal-Mart workers had a case, would have sent the case back to the Ninth Circuit…for good measure, a New York Times Op-Ed chimed in on this here).
In Wal-Mart v. Dukes, all of the justices agreed to reverse the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the case which would have affected up to 1.6 million women and billions of dollars in damages.
That was the easy part. The justices, however, divided on the elements needed for future such cases. It divided along ideological lines with Justice Antonin Scalia holding that the court must require common elements to be the basis for such class actions.
However, as Think Progress reminds us here, this wasn’t even the worst class action ruling by The Supremes this term (TP is having a fundraising appeal at the moment – they’re doing heroic work, and they could use any scratch you can send over to them).
Prior to being elected to the United States Senate last November, I spent 31 years building a plastics manufacturing business in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. My educational background is in accounting and finance, but when you help start a business from scratch, you wind up doing just about everything. I operated machinery, loaded trucks and railcars, hired and trained the staff, kept the books, paid taxes, purchased raw materials, sold our finished products, did payroll, opened mail, emptied trash, and made coffee.I get really fed up with Johnson in particular mythologizing his supposed business chops; as noted here, he got a “hand up” from government bonds and “stim” funds (neither of which is illegal, of course, but some honesty about this would be nice). Oh, and Johnson also used prison labor to get out of paying a fair wage for a hard day’s work.
Why am I telling you this?
Because I’m not in the least bit unusual. Every day, millions of hard-working business owners, and the good people that work with them, struggle to build a good life for themselves and their families. They are the backbone of America. They work hard and play by the rules. And they live within their means.
Why can’t Washington?
Besides, I think it’s more than a bit of a contradiction for Johnson to now be praising our supposedly wonderful system of free enterprise in this country when he once reminded us how great Communist China supposedly is, as noted here.
Update 6/25/11: Tisk, tisk, tisk (here)...
LAS VEGAS - If there were ever any doubt about who controls the Philadelphia Flyers, Ed Snider put that to rest yesterday.Some thoughts…I have to admit that Paul Holmgren has done a better job as the GM of this club than I thought he would, but the fact that he hasn’t been given the clout to tell Snider to butt out is pretty sad. Also, Boston won the Stanley Cup because of Thomas, sure, but also because the team (and I hate to admit this, but it’s true) did a superb job of finding role players who could step up and take some of the burden off the team’s stars (Brad Marchand, Rich Peverley, Chris Kelly, and former Flyer Dennis Seidenberg…also Nathan Horton – I think that stray elbow that put him out for the finals ended up being the turning point of the series, something I'm sure Aaron Rome of Vancouver will be thinking about for a long time).
The Flyers' chairman and founder, now 78, is no omnipresent figurehead. He is still the one pulling the strings.
Snider made it clear that he is the one who wants (Bryzgalov) in a Flyers uniform next season, setting in motion a directive at the end of last season that put general manager Paul Holmgren on a mission.
The Flyers acquired Bryzgalov's rights on June 7.
"It had to be done," Snider told the Daily News, just after arriving here for tonight's NHL Awards show at The Palms Casino and Resort. "I was part of making it happen. It was hard to sit there and watch the Stanley Cup final, knowing what [Tim] Thomas was doing for Boston."
The Flyers have some age issues to deal with, particularly among their defensemen, as well as talent issues among their forwards (there are guys who definitely have benefitted playing with Mike Richards and Danny Briere in particular who, I think, would not have comparable numbers otherwise…see Ville Leino, Scott Hartnell, possibly Dan Carcillo). Signing a marquee goaltender for about one-tenth of your entire salary cap won’t fix that stuff also.
(And I know it’s not in Snider’s DNA to congratulate the winning team on its victory if they’re not wearing orange and black, so I might as well not even go there.)
Besides, I’d heard from one of those Internet tubes somewhere that they’re also looking at Florida Panthers goalie Tomas Vokoun, who I think would be a better fit for a much lower price (all they need is someone to buy time for Flyers’ netminder Sergei Bobrovsky for maybe a year or two).
And I wonder if I’m the only one who sees this as a “Nixon Goes To China” moment for Snider, who once detested the Soviets, partly for good reason, and subsequently refused to scout or draft them or have much of anything to do with them, though he now is doing his best to curry the favor of a Russian player (and a guy who would be the second Russian goalie on the team).
When President Obama voted present on the Iranian uprising and Secretary Clinton described the monstrous Assad as a “reformer,” completely absent was any awareness that both countries are repressive, cruel, and intolerant of dissent…In response, I give you this from President Obama…
…in too many countries, calls for change have thus far been answered by violence. The most extreme example is Libya, where Muammar Qaddafi launched a war against his own people, promising to hunt them down like rats. As I said when the United States joined an international coalition to intervene, we cannot prevent every injustice perpetrated by a regime against its people, and we have learned from our experience in Iraq just how costly and difficult it is to try to impose regime change by force -– no matter how well-intentioned it may be.And as noted here, we recently marked the two-year anniversary of the death of Neda Soltan.
But in Libya, we saw the prospect of imminent massacre, we had a mandate for action, and heard the Libyan people’s call for help. Had we not acted along with our NATO allies and regional coalition partners, thousands would have been killed. The message would have been clear: Keep power by killing as many people as it takes. Now, time is working against Qaddafi. He does not have control over his country. The opposition has organized a legitimate and credible Interim Council. And when Qaddafi inevitably leaves or is forced from power, decades of provocation will come to an end, and the transition to a democratic Libya can proceed.
While Libya has faced violence on the greatest scale, it’s not the only place where leaders have turned to repression to remain in power. Most recently, the Syrian regime has chosen the path of murder and the mass arrests of its citizens. The United States has condemned these actions, and working with the international community we have stepped up our sanctions on the Syrian regime –- including sanctions announced yesterday on President Assad and those around him.
The Syrian people have shown their courage in demanding a transition to democracy. President Assad now has a choice: He can lead that transition, or get out of the way. The Syrian government must stop shooting demonstrators and allow peaceful protests. It must release political prisoners and stop unjust arrests. It must allow human rights monitors to have access to cities like Dara’a; and start a serious dialogue to advance a democratic transition. Otherwise, President Assad and his regime will continue to be challenged from within and will continue to be isolated abroad.
So far, Syria has followed its Iranian ally, seeking assistance from Tehran in the tactics of suppression. And this speaks to the hypocrisy of the Iranian regime, which says it stand for the rights of protesters abroad, yet represses its own people at home. Let’s remember that the first peaceful protests in the region were in the streets of Tehran, where the government brutalized women and men, and threw innocent people into jail. We still hear the chants echo from the rooftops of Tehran. The image of a young woman dying in the streets is still seared in our memory. And we will continue to insist that the Iranian people deserve their universal rights, and a government that does not smother their aspirations.
Not to fear, though – Hanson will be onboard the fall “conservative cruise” along with a cadre of wingnut luminaries. Book your reservations early.
I suppose an untimely November Caribbean hurricane is probably too much to ask for, but I’ll pray for one anyway.
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