People who broke into the Capitol Wednesday are now learning they are on No-Fly lists pending the full investigation. They are not happy about this. pic.twitter.com/5GfHo1eVU8
— Ray [REDACTED] (@RayRedacted) January 10, 2021
People who stormed the Capitol are surprised that they are on No-Fly lists.
It never mattered when leopards ate OTHER people’s faces.
Well, knock me over with a sledge hammer.
The FCC has voted to take back about 75% of the spectrum that it allocated to the auto industry for self driving cars because:
The automobile industry fought this tooth and nail, because they want to use the space to bombard drivers with advertisements, but the FCC unanimously voted to reduce the allocated bandwidth from 75 MHZ to 30 MHz.
The intent is to reallocate the spectrum to rural broadband and the like.
Full press release after break:
By Shiva Stella November 18, 2020Broadband Access, Digital Divide, DSRC, FCC, Rural Broadband, Spectrum
Today, the Federal Communications Commission unanimously adopted an Order reclaiming the 5.9 GHz spectrum band from the auto industry in order to help close the digital divide.
In 2004, the agency gave the auto industry 75 MHz of spectrum exclusively for “Dedicated Short-Range Communications” (DSRC) for the purpose of improving public safety. After 20 years of waiting for the industry to deploy DSRC, the FCC will phase out DSRC and replace it with a new, more efficient technology called C-V2X (cellular communication to vehicles (C-V2V) and infrastructure (C-V2I), collectively “C-V2X”).
Based on the record, the auto industry will require only 30 MHz of spectrum for collision avoidance and safety purposes. Rather than allowing the auto industry to use the remaining 45 MHz of free spectrum for commercial purposes such as location-based advertising, under this proposal the FCC will repurpose 45 MHz for rural broadband and next generation WiFi needed to support telemedicine and other high-bandwidth applications.
The 5.9 GHz band sits next to the existing “unlicensed” spectrum band at 5.8 GHz. Adding the 45 MHz to this band will allow existing equipment to support gigabit WiFi necessary for telemedicine, multiple education streams, and other valuable services. Furthermore, access to this additional spectrum will allow wireless internet service providers in rural areas to dramatically increase the stability and bandwidth of connections to the home.
The following can be attributed to Harold Feld, Senior Vice President at Public Knowledge:
“Today’s FCC action is a win for closing the digital divide, a win for closing the homework gap, and a win for auto safety. The addition of 45 MHz of unlicensed spectrum will create a WiFi channel capable of supporting WiFi 6. This will enable wireless providers to dramatically increase the speed and reliability of rural broadband. It will dramatically increase the power of public hotspots and mobile hotspots on which many low-income families rely for access to school and work during the pandemic. Because this relies on already existing technology, the expansion and change to WiFi 6 can happen relatively quickly through software upgrades once the rules become effective.
“In addition, the FCC will phase out the outmoded vehicle communication technology selected as the standard 20 years ago and will phase in a modern, more efficient technology requiring substantially less spectrum for collision avoidance and safety. The FCC has quite properly denied the auto industry desire to repurpose the excess spectrum for infotainment, behavioral advertising, and other commercial purposes that rely on collecting more and more of the public’s personal data and information. The auto industry should not be allowed to commercialize spectrum intended for public safety — especially when doing so would come at the expense of tens of millions of Americans on the wrong side of the digital divide and the homework gap.”
Uber drivers in the EU are suing the Gypsy cab company for firing them via algorithm, which violates the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) because the company fires drivers by algorithm.
The Europeans, and most of the rest of the world, are far less interested in buying the ride-hailing company’s “Because ……… Internet” crap:
Four Uber drivers in the UK and Portugal who claim they were dismissed unfairly by the company’s anti-fraud algorithm have challenged their account deactivations in a European court, citing GDPR protections against automated decision making.
The App Drivers & Couriers Union, a UK-based worker advocacy group, filed a legal complaint on Monday in a district court in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on behalf of the dismissed drivers.
“Uber has been allowed to violate employment law with impunity for years and now we are seeing a glimpse into an Orwellian world of work where workers have no rights and are managed by machine,” said Yaseen Aslam, President of the App Drivers & Couriers Union, in a statement. “If Uber is not checked, this practice will become the norm for everyone.”
Anton Ekker, the attorney representing the four former drivers – three from the UK and one from Portugal – said in a statement that the case represents the first challenge under the GDPR to automated decisions affecting the estimated 3.9m Uber drivers worldwide.
Article 22 of the GDPR states individuals “have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her.”
I really hope that Uber gets nailed to the wall on this.
The posted a video of their new “Truck” driving down the road, but it turned out that there was no propulsion system.
They just let it roll down hill and made it look like it was powered with camera angles:
Nikola has issued copyright-takedown notices targeting critics on YouTube who used clips of the promotional video in which a Nikola prototype truck was seen rolling down a hill.
Nikola last month admitted that the promotional video of a supposedly functional Nikola One electric truck moving along a highway actually consisted of the company’s vehicle rolling downhill. This week, Nikola “forced the removal of several critical videos from YouTube, saying they infringed its copyright by using footage from the company,” including the truck-rolling-downhill video, the Financial Times reported yesterday.
Sam Alexander is one of at least two financial commentators who had videos removed by Google subsidiary YouTube at Nikola’s request. He says that four of his videos were taken down.
“The claim is from when I showed 30 seconds of their Nikola One in Motion footage, which is what they put on Twitter and it’s of their Nikola One rolling down the hill,” Alexander said in a YouTube video he posted Wednesday.
………
“Right now my main concern is that Nikola is using copyright strikes to silence their critics,” Alexander told the Financial Times. Another YouTuber named Tom Nash “was required to take down three videos that featured criticism of Nikola,” including one that used footage of the moving truck, and has appealed YouTube’s decision, the Financial Times article said.
Meanwhile, both Nikola and Youtube are pointing fingers at each other, but my money is on Nikola
………
A Nikola statement sent to Ars and other media outlets tries to portray YouTube as the party that initiated the video-removal process. “YouTube regularly identifies copyright violations of Nikola content and shares the lists of videos with us,” a Nikola spokesperson told Ars. “Based on YouTube’s information, our initial action was to submit takedown requests to remove the content that was used without our permission. We will continue to evaluate flagged videos on a case-by-case basis.”
YouTube offered a different description, saying that Nikola simply took advantage of the Copyright Match Tool that’s available to people in the YouTube Partner Program.
“Nikola has access to our copyright match tool, which does not automatically remove any videos,” YouTube told the FT. “Users must fill out a copyright removal request form, and when doing so we remind them to consider exceptions to copyright law. Anyone who believes their reuse of a video or segment is protected by fair use can file a counter-notice.”
This is why there should be real, and severe, penalties for misuse of the take-down process in law.
The State of Ohio has ordered GM to tax incentives for a factory that it has closed.
A better idea is not to pay these bribes to the gods of capital in the first place:
The state of Ohio on Monday ordered General Motors to repay $28 million in public subsidies for reneging on its promise to keep its sprawling Lordstown plant open.
The automaker, which had pledged to keep operations going until 2040, closed its assembly plant last October, drawing criticism from elected officials in both political parties, including President Donald Trump. At the time, GM cited the collapsing market for small cars; Lordstown produced the compact Chevrolet Cruze.
But state officials said the closure violated the terms of two economic development agreements GM signed with Ohio more than a decade ago. Between 2009 and 2016, the company received more than $60 million in tax credits to maintain operations at the massive plant, which employed over 4,000 people.
On Monday, the Ohio Tax Credit Authority said GM must pay back roughly half of those tax benefits, as well as provide an additional $12 million in community support in the Mahoning Valley, the economically depressed region where the plant was located. The funds are targeted for education and job training at Youngstown State University and other colleges, community programs and infrastructure projects.
………
Although the clawback falls short of the total $60.3 million that GM received, the state’s action is significant, said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a nonprofit agency that tracks corporate subsidies and violations.
“The $28 million still stands as the biggest clawback we can point to” nationwide, he said. Yet he believes that the state should have pursued a total refund. “It’s kind of a two-thirds of a loaf for taxpayers.”
Unfortunately, it appears that authorities then doubled down on the same f%$#ing failed strategy:
………
At the same time, the tax authority awarded GM a new tax credit to support the battery plant. In return for a promise to create 1,000 jobs, the company will receive a 15-year tax break estimated to be worth $13.8 million over its term.
The numbers are clear on this: These incentives never pay for themselves.
It cost Scott Walker reelection in Wisconsin, but until a few more political “Flaming Datums” are out there, this insanity is likely to continue.
I am referring, of course, to Elon Musk, whose empire has been subsidized to the tune of almost $5 billion.
The actual number is likely far higher, given the indirect subsidies received, such as allowing PayPal, where he made original fortune, function like a bank without having to follow banking regulations, “Because ……… Internet.”
All of these fortunes have resulted from government subsidies, whether it’s Amazon’s early ability to evade sales taxes, Google’s military funding, etc.
The reporters at the LA Times have almost certainly missed some of the subsidies, because many, if not most, of them are indirect:
Los Angeles entrepreneur Elon Musk has built a multibillion-dollar fortune running companies that make electric cars, sell solar panels and launch rockets into space.
And he’s built those companies with the help of billions in government subsidies.
Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to data compiled by The Times. The figure underscores a common theme running through his emerging empire: a public-private financing model underpinning long-shot start-ups.
………
Los Angeles entrepreneur Elon Musk has built a multibillion-dollar fortune running companies that make electric cars, sell solar panels and launch rockets into space.
And he’s built those companies with the help of billions in government subsidies.
Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to data compiled by The Times. The figure underscores a common theme running through his emerging empire: a public-private financing model underpinning long-shot start-ups.
These are not long-shot startups. These are meticulously constructed to extract maximum subsidies.
Also, SolarCity was not a long-shot, it was a corrupt bailout of his cousins who had run the company into the ground.
But public subsidies for Musk’s companies stand out both for the amount, relative to the size of the companies, and for their dependence on them.
“Government support is a theme of all three of these companies, and without it none of them would be around,” said Mark Spiegel, a hedge fund manager for Stanphyl Capital Partners who is shorting Tesla’s stock, a bet that pays off if Tesla shares fall.
Yes, they are short sellers, but that should not mask Musk’s hypocrisy in preaching rugged individualism while meticulously constructing his companies to maximize taxpayer subsidies.
It’s called vomit fraud. And it could make your Uber trip really expensive
Yes, there are Uber divers who create fraudulent “vomit reports” to bag a cleaning charge.
Mostly though, I love the hed.
Sometimes, I’m not good with metaphors.
I can recognize that certain situations evoke a metaphor just as well as the average Joe, but sometimes, the metaphorical possibilities are so broad that I am paralyzed by the range of choices.
Case in point, the sinking of multiple boats at the pro-Trump rally on Lake Travis outside of Austin, TX.
Is this the time for a metaphor about choppy waters, or a metaphor about the wakes of large boats swamping small boats, or just a snarky comment about how maritime navigation charts having a,”Well known liberal bias?”
I am at a loss, reader(s), so I need your help:
A parade of boats in Texas celebrating their support for Donald Trump ended in disarray when multiple vessels got into trouble on apparently choppy waters leading to several sinking and a slew of distress calls being made to rescue officials.
Multiple media reports described a chaotic scene on Lake Travis, near the state capital of Austin, when a procession of boats waving Trump flags and banners motored over the waters but then got into potentially serious trouble.
Videos of the event circulating on social media showed several boats being swamped by waves and sinking as frantic passengers jumped into the water.
A Minnesota biker who attended the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally has died of covid-19 — the first fatality from the virus traced to the 10-day event that drew more than 400,000 to South Dakota.
The man was in his 60s, had underlying conditions and was hospitalized in intensive care after returning from the rally, said Kris Ehresmann, infectious-disease director at the Minnesota Department of Health. The case is among at least 260 cases in 11 states tied directly to the event, according to a survey of health departments by The Washington Post.
Epidemiologists believe that figure is a significant undercount, due to the resistance of some rallygoers to testing and the limited contact tracing in some states. As a result, the true scope of infections stemming from the rally that ran from Aug. 7 to Aug. 16 is unlikely to ever be known. Public health officials had long expressed concern over the decision to move forward with the annual event, believed to be the largest held anywhere in the U.S. since the pandemic shelved most large-scale gatherings.
Now, just over two weeks after the conclusion of the rally, the Midwest and the Dakotas in particular are seeing a spike in coronavirus cases even as infections decline or plateau in the rest of the country. South Dakota’s seven-day averages for new cases stood at 347 on Sept. 2 compared to 107 two weeks earlier and its total caseload was 14,003, up from 10,566, according to The Post’s tracking. In North Dakota, the seven-day averages for new cases was 257, up from 142 two weeks earlier and its total caseload was 12,267, compared to 8,968.
H/t BS at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi is recalling the US House of Representatives early from its summer recess in a bid to protect the US Postal Service from efforts to block funding and suppress mail-in voting in November’s election.
Several states were also considering taking legal action to stop the service being run down to a level where it cannot deliver enough mail-in ballots in November, when almost half the country is expected to vote by post because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Pelosi said the House would return later this week to vote on a bill prohibiting the USPS from changing its operations or service levels from what it had in place at the start of 2020. Previously, the House had not been scheduled to vote until 15 September.
She said late on Sunday that Donald Trump was trying to sabotage the election by manipulating the postal service, and called postmaster general Louis DeJoy “a complicit crony” by bringing in changes that degrades the service and delayed mail.
………
Her comments echoed those of Bernie Sanders, who told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that Trump’s attacks on mail-in voting and his administration’s efforts to block funds for the US post office amounted to “a crisis for American democracy” ahead of the November presidential election.
Needless to say, Mitch McConnell has no plans to bring the Senate back into session, because he doesn’t give a sh%$.
This is no surprise. Hot work has always been a leading cause of fires in industrial settings:
Multiple sources have reported that the disastrous explosion at Port of Beirut was sparked by hot work at a warehouse where officials had stored 2,750 tonnes of confiscated ammonium nitrate and a cache of fireworks. In a new report, senior officials provided Reuters with additional details: early this year they had learned that one of the warehouse’s doors was broken, raising the risk that a malicious actor could steal dangerous explosives. The port’s welding contractors set off the cache while trying to repair the door to protect the cache.
According to the report, the security investigation that set this chain in motion began in January after the broken door and a large hole in the warehouse’s wall were discovered. On June 4 – six months later – state security forces ordered the port to guard the warehouse and make appropriate repairs. On August 4 – two months after the order – the port sent a team of Syrian workers to fix the warehouse. Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks, which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache.
As an interesting aside, it appears that we still have no information as to who actually owned the ammonium nitrate which languished for years in a warehouse:
In the murky story of how a cache of highly explosive ammonium nitrate ended up on the Beirut waterfront, one thing is clear — no one has ever publicly come forward to claim it.
There are many unanswered questions surrounding last week’s huge, deadly blast in the Lebanese capital, but ownership should be among the easiest to resolve.
………
But Reuters interviews and trawls for documents across 10 countries in search of the original ownership of this 2,750-tonne consignment instead revealed an intricate tale of missing documentation, secrecy and a web of small, obscure companies that span the globe.
At this point, I’m pretty sure that there are 3 or 4 oligarchs crapping their pants over the possibility that they are tied to this disaster.
Donald Trump has now definitively stating that he is blocking US Post Office funding in an attempt to sabotage vote-by-mail:
President Donald Trump said on Thursday he was blocking Democrats’ effort to include funds for the U.S. Postal Service and election infrastructure in a new coronavirus relief bill, a bid to block more Americans from voting by mail during the pandemic.
Congressional Democrats accused Republican Trump of trying to damage the struggling Postal Service to improve his chances of being re-elected as opinion polls show him trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
Trump has been railing against mail-in ballots for months as a possible source of fraud, although millions of Americans – including much of the military – have cast absentee ballots by mail for years without such problems.
Trump said his negotiators have resisted Democrats’ calls for additional money to help prepare for presidential, congressional and local voting during a pandemic that has killed more than 165,000 Americans and presented logistical challenges to organizing as large an event as the Nov. 3 elections.
“The items are the post office and the $3.5 billion for mail-in voting,” Trump told Fox Business Network, saying Democrats want to give the post office $25 billion. “If we don’t make the deal, that means they can’t have the money, that means they can’t have universal mail-in voting.”
Trump later said at a news briefing that if a deal was reached that included postal funding, he would not veto it.
So, he is admitting that he wants to squelch vote by mail, but it’s too much of a wimp to veto a relief bill.
In any case this will not prevent Trump and his Evil Minions™ from actively sabotaging Post Office operations:
The United States Postal Service is removing mail sorting machines from facilities around the country without any official explanation or reason given, Motherboard has learned through interviews with postal workers and union officials. In many cases, these are the same machines that would be tasked with sorting ballots, calling into question promises made by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy that the USPS has “ample capacity” to handle the predicted surge in mail-in ballots.
Motherboard identified 19 mail sorting machines from five processing facilities across the U.S. that either have already been removed or are scheduled to be in the near future. But the Postal Service operates hundreds of distribution facilities around the country, so it is not clear precisely how many machines are getting removed and for what purpose.
Even to local union officials, USPS has not announced any policy, explained why they are doing this, what will happen to the machines and the workers who use them. Nor has management provided a rationale for dismantling and removing the machines from the facility rather than merely not operating them when they’re not needed.
………
While the consequences of this new policy are mostly unclear for now, it neatly fits with the sudden, opaque, and drastic changes made by DeJoy, a longtime Republican fundraiser and Trump donor, in the less than two months he’s been postmaster general. Like his other changes, including the curtailing of overtime resulting in the widespread mail delays and sudden reorganization of the entire USPS, it is possible to see some semblance of corporate logic while second-guessing the decision to make drastic changes on the eve of the presidential election in which the USPS will play a critical role.
This is literally page 1 of the despot’s play book, and if it were happening in Venezuela Mike Pompeo would be condemning this as an affront to democracy.
I understand that Khosrowshahi is concerned that paying his drivers would adversely impact his stock options, but Uber literally has nothing but its dominance of the app based cab space.
If they shut down for a week, they will lose market share in California that they will NEVER get back. They have no unique technology, no copyright or patent exclusivity, and very little in the way of good will from their customers or their drivers.
As an aside, now is the time for a couple of coder dudes to set up a app based driver cooperative:
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is warning that a landmark California ruling on the employment status of its drivers could force the company to shut down its service in California until November.
“We think we comply by the laws,” Khosrowshahi said on MSNBC. “But if the judge and the court finds that we’re not, and they don’t give us a stay to get to November, then we’ll have to essentially shut down Uber until November when the voters decide.”
………
After the law passed last year, Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash spent more than $100 million gathering signatures for a voter initiative that would overturn the law. It is slated to appear on the ballot in November.
Do you want some cheese for that whine?
I am the CEO of Foxes. Hens deserve better. pic.twitter.com/AGVeYRNRGt— Marshall Steinbaum 🔥 (@Econ_Marshall) August 10, 2020
The Management is Simply Contemptible Human Beings.
Read the whole thread, or check it out on the Threadreader App
A California judge has just issued an injunction preventing Uber and Lyft forbidding the Gypsy cab companies from treating their drivers as independent contractors:
A California judge has issued a preliminary injunction that would block Uber and Lyft from classifying their drivers as independent contractors rather than employees.
The move on Monday came in response to a May lawsuit filed by the state of California against the companies, which alleged they are misclassifying their drivers under the state’s new labor law.
That law, known as AB5, took effect on 1 January. The strictest of its kind in the US, it makes it more difficult for companies to classify workers as independent contractors instead of employees who are entitled to minimum wage and benefits. The lack of workers’ compensation and unemployment benefits for drivers has become increasingly urgent during the coronavirus pandemic, as ridership plunges and workers struggle to protect themselves.
California is the largest market in the US for Uber and Lyft and the state where both companies were founded.
The lawsuit, and Monday’s injunction, are the most significant challenges to the ride-hailing companies’ business model thus far. Judge Ethan Schulman of the San Francisco superior court delayed enforcing his order by 10 days to give the companies a chance to appeal.
Uber, and to a slightly smaller degree Lyft, have shifted their cost onto the rest of us by not paying workers’ comp, not paying unemployment insurance, not paying their portion of FICA, not vetting their drivers properly, increasing congestion, etc.
They need to pay their fair share, and allowing them to ignore the law, “Because ……… Internet,” means that the rest of us are subsidizing their businesses.
Great Touring Bike Deals Coming To An Estate Sale Near You, Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Hopes To Welcome 250,000
There are going to be thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Covid-19 infections directly from this get-together, and then everyone will drive home, carrying it back to their communities.
If you are looking for a cheap Harley, you may want to wait a few weeks.
H/t DC at the Steller Parthenon BBS.
This means that the Gypsy cab companies may have to start paying for yet another societal cost that they foist on the rest of us.
The order is directed at the New York unemployment office, but it appears that it will likely force these companies to report earnings, and (eventually) pay the unemployment insurance premiums that they have been evading:
A federal judge has ordered the state of New York to quickly pay unemployment benefits to four Uber and Lyft drivers who have been waiting for the payments since March or April. The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which filed a lawsuit over the issue back in May, says that the ruling could ultimately help thousands of drivers in similar situations.
Uber and Lyft have long argued that its drivers are independent contractors, not employees. That stance has come under increasing pressure. Since 2016, the New York Department of Labor has held that ride-hail drivers were employees for purposes of unemployment insurance. But Uber and Lyft have dragged their feet, failing to provide wage data that would enable the agency to calculate unemployment payments for each worker.
As a result, when Uber and Lyft drivers forced out of work by the pandemic applied for unemployment benefits, some were told that they weren’t eligible because state data showed them with zero earnings. Workers continued to be denied benefits even after they submitted 1099 tax forms showing their earnings.
………
In her Tuesday ruling, Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall sided squarely with the drivers. She acknowledged that Uber and Lyft bore some of the blame for failing to supply the state with necessary data. But she said the state still had an obligation to pay benefits promptly—using data supplied by workers themselves if necessary.
Assuming that Andrew “Rat Faced Andy” Cuomo is not in the gig companies’ pockets, (a big if) collecting wage data, along with pursuing payment of premiums, should occur as a matter of basic bureaucratic imperative.
Wait ……… Is that what I think it is?
Yes, it is, and it is circumcised
I picked up Nat from camp this morning, the counselors had a camping night together, and she wanted to pick up a bite at the local convenience store, Wally’s Country Store.
So, I parked while she masked up and went in.
I looked to my left, and noticed something odd about the car next to me: The valve stem covers appeared to be penises.
This, much like truck nutz, it appears to be a metaphor for American society today.
They are almost Trumpian in their crassness, though I am aware that truck nutz predate Donald Trump’s political aspirations by decades.
How is this a thing?
I did not see this coming.
The regulatory rollbacks of the Trump administration are subsidies, and it’s good that the courts are pushing back:
A number of recent legal defeats and business decisions have stymied three multibillion-dollar pipeline projects around the country, setting back President Trump’s 3½-year effort to expand oil and gas development in the United States.
………
In a surprise decision Monday, a federal judge ruled that the Dakota Access pipeline — which Trump approved within a month of taking office — must be shut down by Aug. 5, saying federal officials failed to carry out a complete analysis of its environmental impacts. The day before, two energy companies behind the controversial, 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline abandoned their six-year bid to build it, saying the $8 billion project has become too expensive and faces an uncertain regulatory environment. And an April decision by a federal judge in Montana dealt a blow to the Keystone XL pipeline and raised questions about whether the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will have to conduct more extensive environmental reviews for other projects.
………
American Petroleum Institute President Mike Sommers said in a statement Monday that his trade group was “deeply troubled by these setbacks for U.S. energy leadership.”
Their tears are sauce for my lamb chops.
………
In several instances, long-standing statutes such as the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to assess and disclose how their decisions might harm the environment, have tripped up the administration. In his ruling regarding the Dakota Access pipeline, U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg wrote that the federal government had not met all the requirements of the 50-year-old-law, which the administration is seeking to rewrite.
………
Several tribes, including the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux, first challenged the pipeline in 2016. While the Obama administration slowed the pipeline’s development as it consulted with the tribes, Trump expedited its construction immediately after taking office.
“Today is a historic day for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the many people who have supported us in the fight against the pipeline,” said the tribe’s chairman, Mike Faith, in a statement. “This pipeline should have never been built here. We told them that from the beginning.”
I am happy.
The California PUC has just made it official, ruling that the drivers for Uber and Lyft are employees, not independent contractors.I guess that the “Ride Sharing” companies are going to have to find a new way to f%$# over their drivers to justify the obscene money that they pay their senior executives.
Oh, the humanity.
Think of the venture capitalists!
The California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates private transport companies including Uber and Lyft, has ruled that the two upstarts’ drivers should be recognized as employees instead of contractors.
The issue over the status of drivers for ride-hailing companies has been controversial for a while. Cali Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 5, known as AB5, that classifies gig economy workers, such as Uber and Lyft drivers, as employees in the US state.
The law came into force in January this year, though Uber and Lyft have resisted the change. Both companies were sued by the state’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra last month for failing to recognize its drivers as employees. Now, the California Public Utilities Commission has weighed in.
About f%$#ing time.
Ray Ciccarelli (0-31 in his career) has announced his retirement from NASCAR due to their decision to ban confederate flags. NASCAR is scrambling to find someone else to regularly finish 28th.
It's no surprise. Ciccarelli has never been good at anything race-related.
— Steve Hofstetter (@SteveHofstetter) June 11, 2020
This is a remarkably sick burn.