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The Supreme Court of the United States has issued a unanimous decision that security screenings after the work day, regardless of the amount of time they take to perform, do not qualify for remuneration. The decision focuses on the Portal-To-Portal Act of 1947 which defines a workday that specifically excludes those activities "incidental" to an employee's primary responsibilities.
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SCOTUS Finds in Favor of Amazon, No Pay for Mandatory Security Screenings
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Life is a serious burden, which no thinking, humane person would
wantonly inflict on someone else.
-- Clarence Darrow
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday December 11 2014, @03:19PM
Last week it was Ferguson, then Erik Garner, then yesterday it was the CIA torture report. Now we get this. Two weeks ago it was, I believe, the recordings from a fired member of the SEC about "regulatory capture," AKA the Wall Street banks are above the Law. The week before that it was the missteps with Ebola. I sit here an I wonder, which will be the straw that breaks the camel's back? Is there any point at which the whole house of cards will come tumbling down?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday December 11 2014, @03:33PM
When the bread and circuses stop being enough. Which I'm figuring maybe another 5 years, if we're lucky.
What has happened is that the government has lost the consent of the governed, and the correction mechanism it was supposed to have (elections) have proven ineffective to change that. This is unsurprising, since the leadership of both major parties agree on the policies that cause the problem, and cooperate to shut everyone else out of the process.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by mrchew1982 on Thursday December 11 2014, @03:57PM
Personally I don't think that the current elections style of government scales very well. I'm not sure what the cure should be though. A more EU palimentry style might work, or more local control. I'm sure I've missed a few.
To be honest though, democracy will only fail if we stop trying to fix it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11 2014, @04:35PM
The problems with first past the post
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo [youtube.com]
The Alternative Vote Explained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11 2014, @04:37PM
The problems with first past the post
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo [youtube.com]
The Alternative Vote Explained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday December 11 2014, @04:11PM
Fair enough, but what bread and what circuses? TV viewership is plummeting. Sports viewership is plummeting. Mass media is dying daily. How long can they use those to paper over the daily reality of suck?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Thursday December 11 2014, @04:27PM
They'll just replace entertaining pablum with fear snacks. Fear of Ebola, fear of teh t3rrOrz, fear of the police, fear of bogeyman_du_jour. Whatever it takes.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday December 11 2014, @05:20PM
As a social scientist by training, I do wonder what the predictive formula is. Is the velocity coefficient .8 or below meaning no more than one major catastrophe per day? Or is there a numbing effect that's captured in the model. When does the Jenga game they're playing with societal stability collapse into free-fall? Are the social media monitoring teams given threshhold guidelines that throw up red flags when the number of "Burn Washington D.C. to the ground" mentions tops 1 million in a 24-hr span? Is that why all of a sudden the 24/7 coverage of Ebola cases suddenly vanished, because they were pushing such threshholds to the limit?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday December 11 2014, @08:03PM
Burning Washington to the ground is hardly necessary. The system as a whole is much more vulnerable than that, to both human actions and nature.
Imagine, for example, somebody effectively shutting down the ports on the US West Coast or some major freight rail lines would cause all sorts of major problems. Or the drought problems [unl.edu] getting worse than they already are causing major disruptions to the food supply. Or if OPEC decides to play hardball and it's 1979 all over again. Or if Hurricane Sandy becomes a frequent event. Or if someone or something knocks out the Internet backbone cabling. Or if the USPS work force decided to go on strike (legally or not). Or if other nations decide to start a trade war with the US due to our atrocious human rights record.
The dirty little secret of the current system: The 0.1% who own most of this country's wealth depend entirely on the other 99.9% of us to keep doing something similar to what we're already doing. If we just stopped trying to get or keep the jobs that are part of institutions they control, that would leave them all in big trouble.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11 2014, @09:23PM
The 0.1% who own most of this country's wealth depend entirely on the other 99.9% of us
General strike [wikipedia.org]
The Wobblies (IWW) are mentioned prominently farther down on the page.
#Industrial Workers of the World [wikipedia.org]
also interesting
#Notable general strikes [wikipedia.org]
Wildcat strike [wikipedia.org]
(The section on Vietnam is even more interesting than the part about USA.)
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Friday December 12 2014, @12:23AM
timely....
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday December 12 2014, @08:41PM
The fallacy of that is that the 99% is not a cohesive group. Neither, of course, is the 1%, but being a smaller group they have less internal divergence of interests. (Yes, that's oversimplified. But thinking of the groups as "the 1%" and "the 99%" is even more oversimplified.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @09:35PM
As Stephen Colbert (and perhaps others) likes to point out, reality has a Liberal bias.
The majority of folks are egalitarian and in favor of mostly-unconstricted civil liberties.
(You might investigate Ralph Nader's Left-Right Alliance.
He has e.g. Grover Norquist onboard.)
If just -those- folks would suit up and show up, things could get better rapidly.
N.B. The turnout in November was 36 percent of registered voters (and only 70 percent of those eligible actually register).
Those folks will also have to stop consuming Lamestream Media and get their information ONLY from outlets that do NOT take money from corporations and/or billionaires.
Come to think of it, yeah, getting people off their couches surely does look like a pipe dream.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday December 13 2014, @01:59PM
When I say, "Burn Washington D.C. to the ground," it's short-hand for a much more complex set of actions, similar to how 1% vs. 99% is short-hand for a much more complex situation.
But I agree with you--there are many parts of this system now and if a significant number of us in any sector sharply change our behavior, the tipping point can be reached.
I was discussing all this with a fellow veteran of grassroots politics yesterday. The trouble the Powers That Be are creating for themselves is that in trying so hard to keep total control of the status quo, to disrupt the formation of consensus among the opposition through organs like the NSA and GCHQ, they are not making the underlying historical trends and realities go away. Rather, they are guaranteeing that when things do explode, they will come from nowhere and everywhere at once and there will be no ordered opposition for them to negotiate peace terms with. It will be bloodier than the French Revolution by far because there will be no Jacobeans to moderate the bloodlust of the crowds.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday December 11 2014, @05:37PM
As far as bread goes, most Americans still have enough food to eat. And that's incredibly important: The revolts in the Middle East all occurred in an environment where educated young people couldn't get enough food, which made attempting political revolution less risky (the education helps make organizations more effective).
Some circuses that are still around and functioning:
- As you point out, mass media is dying out, but it's still there, and it's still pretty ubiquitous.
- Sports viewership is also not small: about 20 million people tune in to watch them on TV, in addition to the fans actually at the games.
- The stupid inanities on social media, like cat pictures or viral videos.
- Advertising, which is all about "Your life won't suck once you buy this!"
- Religious institutions. Regardless of the benefits of religious charity and spiritual practices, churches can and often do distract people from problems in the here-and-now.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheGratefulNet on Thursday December 11 2014, @09:07PM
of of the hidden goals of all major religions is: "pay now, receive later"
suffer in this life and 'the next one' will be your paradise.
of course, this is pure hogwash and no one with half a brain believes in the old fairytales anymore.
but it does convince the lower and middle classes to 'stay in your place' and not to rock the boat too much.
the upper classes all 'subscribe' to religion just for show. they want you to believe that they, too, believe it. but only the dumbest of the rich truly believe this bullshit. they know it for what it is: keeping them in power during this lifetime - the only lifetime we will ever get, btw.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday December 12 2014, @08:43PM
Religious belief has less to do with intelligence than indoctrination. Many quite intelligent people are religious, though they tend to have beliefs that in an earlier era would have earned the the label "heretic".
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13 2014, @10:27AM
This account [wikipedia.org] says otherwise in numerous places. Here are some of them:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @09:57AM
The problem is this is a woman's cuntry.
Men are denied the things that actually make them happy.
Like cute young girls, and guns.
Women can have any man imprisoned, fired too.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday December 11 2014, @05:16PM
> Is there any point at which the whole house of cards will come tumbling down?
Nope.
The USA is full of temporarily inconvenienced millionaires. People know to work hard and hope for the great rewards of the American Dream. Examples of success are all around, and soon it will be me! Look at what I already have!
People who have stuff to lose don't start revolutions. (some do trigger them, but they are not on the front row)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11 2014, @09:30PM
Now, you could have given attribution for the great phrase.
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." --John Steinbeck[1]
Otherwise, you're right on the money:
Frightened folks aren't going to risk the crumbs they have to get the whole loaf they deserve.
...and the task that the 1 Percent has set for itself is to make sure the Proles stay scared.
[1] I recently heard Los Angeles Theater Works' presentation of "The Grapes of Wrath".
The dude definitely had his finger on the pulse of the nation.
-- gewg_