Calista241
Calista241's JournalWalmart is raising wages and giving bonuses, citing tax cuts
Source: Axios
Walmart is boosting starting wages, providing a one-time bonus for employees and expanding benefits, the company said in a press release on Thursday, citing the tax cuts signed into law by President Trump last year. The plan benefits more than a million employees, the company told Axios.
Details: The bonus is based on length of service, with those who've worked 20 years eligible for $1,000. The company, which is the largest private employer in the U.S. and employs roughly 2.2 million people worldwide, is also raising its starting wage to $11 an hour. The current starting wage for store associates is $9 an hour. The company also said it plans to expand its maternity and paternity leave benefits.
Read more: https://www.axios.com/walmart-boosting-1515675530-f1641dc4-c92c-4002-ab00-b2e8cf35d540.html?source=sidebar
Judge again rules for Trump administration in fight for control of CFPB
Source: Washington Post
A federal judge on Wednesday sided with the Trump administration for a second time in a fight for control of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, denying a request by a high-ranking agency employee that she be put in charge instead of the White House’s pick.
U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly on Wednesday turned down Leandra English’s request for a temporary restraining order that would prevent White House budget director Mick Mulvaney from serving as the CFPB’s acting director. “English has not demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits or shown that she will suffer irreparable injury absent injunctive relief,” Kelly said in the 46-page ruling.
...
English’s attorneys have argued that the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which established the CFPB after the financial crisis, laid out a specific plan of succession authorizing the deputy director to take over until a White House nominee is confirmed by the Senate. Also, they said, Mulvaney cannot wear two hats by simultaneously leading the independent financial regulator while serving as director the Office of Management and Budget.
“We are disappointed in today’s decision,” Deepak Gupta, English’s attorney, said in a statement. ”The law is clear: President Trump may not circumvent the Senate confirmation process by installing his White House budget director to run the CFPB part time. Mr. Mulvaney’s appointment undermines the Bureau’s independence and threatens its mission to protect American consumers.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/01/10/judge-again-rules-for-trump-administration-in-fight-for-control-of-cfpb/?utm_term=.90b1db60134c
Trump: I have a 'much bigger' button than Kim Jong Un
Source: The Hill
President Trump on Tuesday said that the nuclear launch button on his desk is "much bigger" and "more powerful" than that of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un – and that his button actually "works."
"North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the 'Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times,'" Trump tweeted. "Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!"
Trump's comments came after Kim said in a New Year's Day speech that he had a nuclear launch button at his desk, and that the international community would have to accept North Korea's status as a nuclear-armed nation as a "reality."
In that address, Kim also said he was willing to send a delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February and engage in talks with Seoul about easing military tensions between the two countries.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/948355557022420992
Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/367149-trump-i-have-a-much-bigger-button-than-kim-jong-un
Is this the President, or a horrible late night tv joke?
Dave Chappelle
Just watched his New Years Netflix special, and the dude is hilarious. He's crass, and can offend people, but the dude has a gift for comedy.
What do you guys think?
Chief Justice Roberts says courts will examine protections against sexual harassment
Source: Washington Post
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. announced an initiative Sunday to ensure there are proper procedures in place to protect law clerks and other court employees from sexual harassment, saying it is clear that the federal judiciary “is not immune” from a widespread problem.
The statement, in Roberts’s 2017 State of the Judiciary Report , follows the retirement last month of Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The influential 67-year-old judge stepped down after two reports in The Washington Post detailed allegations he had subjected former law clerks and other women to inappropriate sexual behavior.
“Events in recent months have illuminated the depth of the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace, and events in the past few weeks have made clear that the judicial branch is not immune,” Roberts wrote.
“The judiciary will begin 2018 by undertaking a careful evaluation of whether its standards of conduct and its procedures for investigating and correcting inappropriate behavior are adequate to ensure an exemplary workplace for every judge and every court employee.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/chief-justice-roberts-says-courts-will-examine-protections-against-sexual-harassment/2017/12/31/94a55d00-ee40-11e7-97bf-bba379b809ab_story.html?utm_term=.271a0a70684e
President Trump Is the Second-Most Admired Man in America, Gallup Poll Finds
Source: Time
Donald Trump may be the current president, but in terms of who Americans most admire, his predecessor and the person he beat in the 2016 election top the list.
Barack Obama edged his successor as the most admired man for 2017, a Gallup poll finds, marking the first time since 2008 when a sitting president didn’t win the annual accolade. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, is the woman Americans most admire for the 16th year in a row.
It was a close race. Seventeen percent of those surveyed named Obama as the man they most admire, to 14 percent for Trump. To no surprise, there was a wide partisan split, with 35 percent of Republicans saying Trump was most admired man of the year, and 39 percent of Democrats picking Obama.
“Trump’s unpopularity is holding him back from winning the most admired distinction,” Gallup’s Jeffrey Jones wrote. “The incumbent president is the usual winner, since he is arguably the most prominent figure in the country — but when the president is unpopular, other well-known and well-liked men have been able to finish first.”
Read more: http://time.com/5080498/admiration-poll-donald-tru
Trump issues first commuted prison sentence
Source: The Hill
President Trump on Wednesday issued his first commuted sentence for a federal prisoner, freeing Sholom Rubashkin, the former owner of the country’s largest kosher meat-processing plant who in 2009 was sentenced to 27 years in prison for a litany of financial crimes.
The commutation had bipartisan support from lawmakers and had become a cause among many leading voices in the legal community, petitioning the Obama and Trump administrations to draw attention to a sentence they said was wildly disproportionate to the crime that had been committed.
Rubashkin, a father of 10, will have served eight years of his sentence. The commutation is not a presidential pardon — Rubashkin’s conviction will stand, as will his terms of release and the restitution payments he will be obliged to pay.
Still, the commutation will clear Rubashkin of the remaining 19 years of a sentence that had been condemned by politicians on the left and the right as cruel and unusual.
Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/365907-trump-issues-first-commuted-prison-sentence
Catt Sadler says she's leaving E! because her co-host got paid nearly double her salary
Source: CBS News
After nearly 12 years at E!, Catt Sadler has announced that she is leaving the network after finding out that her co-host, Jason Kennedy, makes "close to double" her salary. Sadler said the anchor job there was a "dream come true," but she decided to leave after E! did not meet her request for a salary close to Kennedy's.
Sadler wrote on her website, "It was important for me to explain my departure." She said that hosting both the new show "Daily Pop" and "E! News" this year was "one of the most fulfilling years" of her professional career, but her joy was dampened when an executive informed her that "there was a massive disparity in pay" between Sadler's and Kennedy's salaries.
"I learned that [Kennedy] wasn't just making a little more than I was. In fact, he was making close to double my salary for the past several years," she wrote. "My team and I asked for what I know I deserve and were denied repeatedly."
Sadler said that she does not fault Kennedy, who is her close friend, but pointed out that the two have a similar background and started at E! at the same time.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/catt-sadler-says-shes-leaving-e-because-her-co-host-got-paid-nearly-double-her-salary/
Preliminary Scan Suggests This Interstellar Visitor Is Not an Alien Spaceship
Source: Gizmodo
On October 19, 2017, astronomers witnessed the first known interstellar asteroid—a bizarre, cigar-shaped rock that, just as quickly as it entered into our Solar System, exited in a hurry. Not satisfied that ‘Oumuamua, as it’s been named, is just an odd asteroid, astronomers from Breakthrough Listen recently tuned their Green Bank telescope into the object to see if it’s an alien spaceship or some kind of probe. The preliminary results are now in and—brace yourself—it’s still a rock.
Typically, scientists at Breakthrough Listen hunt for aliens by scanning distant stars, but when ‘Oumuamua (pronounced “oh-moo-ah-moo-ah” and meaning “a messenger from afar arriving first”) paid us an unexpected visit, it was an opportunity they couldn’t pass up. Indeed, astronomers have catalogued around 750,000 asteroids, yet this is the only known chunk of rock to originate from a different stellar neighborhood. What’s more, ‘Oumuamua’s strange shape and awesome speed (it’s moving at 26.3 km/s) hinted at something perhaps not quite natural.
Using Breakthrough Listen’s backend instrument on the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, the astronomers ran the first of four scans, or “blocks,” of observations from 3:45pm to 9:45pm ET on December 13. The asteroid, or alleged spaceship, was scanned across four radio bands, each of which corresponded to four radio receivers, denoted L, S, X, C, and spanning billions of individual channels from 1 to 12 GHz. During this first block of observations, the astronomers also collected 90 TB of data, which, unsurprisingly, they’re still parsing through.
No artificial signals were detected within this first block of data. So depending on your opinion of aliens, this is either good or bad news (raises hand that this is good news).
Read more: https://gizmodo.com/preliminary-scan-suggests-this-interstellar-visitor-is-1821305279
Well, that's disappointing.
Best Quote i heard today:
"Cows are just machines we invented, to turn grass into steak." - Neil deGrasse Tyson (10.15.17 - StarTalk)
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayHometown: Atlanta
Home country: US
Member since: Sat Jun 1, 2013, 01:19 AM
Number of posts: 5,586
