LABOR, ECONOMY & THE CLIMATE - page 22

With four months left in office, President Obama is staring down mounting judicial vacancies around the country. As a result of Senate obstruction, he will likely be the first executive in nearly two decades to leave office with federal district courts less staffed than when he was sworn in. There are 673 district judgeships around the nation, and 75 of them are currently vacant. That’s an 83 percent increase from when President Obama took office, when there were only 41 vacancies, according to data from the… Keep Reading

Former Treasury Secretary and Citibank Chair Bob Rubin was cited by a special congressional panel as someone who should have been the subject of a criminal investigation for activities related to the 2008 subprime mortgage meltdown. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) had told the Justice Department that it should open an investigation of Rubin, Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, for alleged securities fraud perpetrated as a member of Citibank’s board. Rubin was among nine executives recommended for a criminal probe by the FCIC that… Keep Reading

A Democratic congressman said that Republicans aren’t offering a unique alternative to Obamacare because they know that the only working substitute would be Medicare-for-all. Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) made the accusations on Wednesday, at a House committee hearing set up by Republicans to criticize the Affordable Care Act (ACA). “The reason they have not proposed a viable alternative to the ACA, other than going back to pre-ACA situation, I’m convinced, is because the only other alternative is single-payer,” Yarmuth said. The law has come under… Keep Reading

President Obama has touted this week’s Census report on poverty and income as evidence that his economic policies are working. “We lifted 3.5 million people out of poverty–the largest one-year drop in the poverty rate since 1968,” he said Tuesday. But the claims obscure an actor who inadvertently helped boost American incomes last year: the Government of Saudi Arabia. The data released by the Census Bureau showed that inflation-adjusted median incomes had increased for the first time since 2007, by an impressive 5.2 percent. This… Keep Reading

The Supreme Court was asked to settle disputes over the legality of contract terms that bar employees from filing class action lawsuits, in petitions filed by opposing parties. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), accounting conglomerate Ernst & Young, and medical software company Epic Systems have all asked Justices to rule on the issue, according to a Politico article published on Monday. Appellate courts have recently issued decisions both in favor and against the NLRB, which is seeking to have class action waivers declared illegal… Keep Reading

Donald Trump hit out at Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, questioning her independence from President Obama and the wisdom of low interest rates. “She’s keeping them [interest rates] artificially low to get Obama retired,” he said on CNBC. “It’s a very serious problem.” “I think she’s very political, and to a certain extent I think she should be ashamed of herself,” he added. “Any increase at all will be a very, very small increase because they want to keep the market up so Obama goes… Keep Reading

A new report by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows that municipal utility providers offer better results than their corporate competitors. Power plants owned and operated by city governments experienced on average one outage in 2015, usually lasting up to two hours, according to the study. Those performance indicators outpaced other utility types in 2015. Investor-owned energy producers averaged more than one outage a year. They typically lasted beyond three hours. Cooperatively owned utilities fared the worst, averaging more than two outages a year that… Keep Reading

Private college giant ITT Tech announced it was closing down on Tuesday, becoming the latest higher education profiteer to buckle under federal investigations into alleged wrongdoing. The shut down is the culmination of the company’s death spiral, which began last month when the Department of Education formally sanctioned it by preventing taxpayer dollars from funding future enrollees. For-profit colleges overwhelmingly depend on taxpayer-funded student loans to enroll new students. ITT Tech received nearly $600 million in federal money in 2015 alone. “The actions of and… Keep Reading