From Angie Sullivan in Nevada, where the rich play, kep taxes low, and are privatizing the public schools:
“Some of the most wealthy people in the world live in Nevada.
What do billionaires and business people do for fun in Nevada?
Reform public education of course!
What do Casino Tycoon Elaine Wynn, Amazon.com Jeff Bezos, and Zappos Tony Hsieh have in common? Teach for America and ALEC inspired education reform. The return on investment model should be applied everywhere!
All this experimentation with public education – without research or time tested results , wouldn’t bother me so much if the situation were not so financially dire in the State of Nevada. Last in the nation in funding, huge at-risk populations, and limited funds to siphon for billionaire fly-by-night ideas.
Did you know that Nevada will vote on a 2% tax on businesses earning $1 million or more in November 2014? This has our education reforming billionaires really twisted. Nevada is one of the few states that does not tax corporations. This attracts billionaires who are adverse to paying . . . anything.
Did you know that Jeff Bezos the founder and CEO of Amazon.com has a warehouse outside of Fernley, Nevada in the desert?
Did you know that this ecommerce company pays taxes based on location of warehouse?
Did you know that Amazon.com has a history of union-busting and treating labor poorly to maximize income?
Did you know that Amazon.com is a known tax evader and does all it can to not pay its fair share?
Did you know Jeff Bezos belonged to ALEC and ALEC aided him with his Amazon.com loopholes?
Did you know that Jeff Bezos is really excited by charter schools, privatization and union-busting? Bad news for public schools.
Did you know that Amazon.com bought Zappos?
Did you know that Tony Hsieh is the founder and still works at Zappos – which is now located in downtown Las Vegas – revitalizing the area?
Did you know that Tony Hsieh is involved with Teach for America and plans to continue to bring at least 1,000 TFA to Vegas?
Teach for America are young and excited but they aren’t trained to be teachers – unless you think a few weeks is enough. 150 Teach for America were hired in Vegas at the same time 1400 fully licensed Teachers were pink slipped resulting in union-busting.
Did you know TFA mingle with Zappos employees, even going on spring break trips and retreats together?
Did you know that Victor Wakefield, Executive Director of Teach for America, is married to Nevada State School board member (former TFA) Alexis Gonsalez-Black, Zappos?
Did you know that Elaine Wynn, Casino Tycoon, and Tony Hsieh, Zappos donated heavily to the Nevada State Election Campaigns of Alexis Gonsalez-Black and Allison Serafin? President Elaine Wynn, Alexis Gonsalez-Black and Allison Serafin who all have connections to big money and Teach for America sit on the Nevada State Education Board. Hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars spent on unpaid board seats — one has to ask . . . why?
Did you know that during the last legislative session the NV assembly prevented TFA from receiving additional tax payer funds for its non-profit. And TFA then went to CCSD and asked for additional funds – this was rejected. And then TFA went to the City of Las Vegas – and received money from the city . . . unprecedented “education funding” to a cash flushed non-profit? Public Schools recently endured one billion in budget cuts but there is money for this?
Did you know that Teach for America is becoming a major political player and national campaign contributor – as a non-profit?
Did you know that Governors in other states refused to give TFA money because they had so much? $350 million in net assets.
Did you know that education philantrophy makes a nice non-profit tax shelter.
Did you know that Elaine Wynn is President of the National Non-Profit Communities in Schools- which declares an unbelievable and most likely unprovable – drop out prevention (return on business investment) success story?
Wynn donates hundreds of thousands across the nation to Communities in Schools – she is so kind!
And her international $135 million giving to Macau was even cause for investigation! The SEC called the gift suspicious; More suspicious is Wynn’s appointment by the Governor of Reno to the Nevada State School Board while being investigated?
Does anyone see a pattern with these business oriented billionaires and their plans for public schools? When public education is a large portion of the state budget and you are a billionaire partially because of sketchy business practices and tax dodging . . . it makes sense that you want to distract everyone by reforming public schools instead of paying your fair share and funding schools adequately.
Nevada needs the community to vote for the TEI in November 2014.
The high rolling billionaires need to pay their fair share this time around instead of coming up with “great education ideas” that don’t work.
http://www.theeducationinitiative.com/
Angie”
Notes and Links:
Jeff Bezos
Amazon is required to collect the tax only in states where it maintains a physical presence, such as a warehouse. But Amazon now is supporting the bill, which has passed the Senate and is pending in the House. State sales taxes no longer pose a real threat to Amazon; with an emphasis on same-day shipping, the company is building distribution warehouses across the country and would have to pay the tax anyway.
The Bezos Family Foundation — whose board includes Bezos, his parents and other family members — gave more than $11 million in 2011 to an array of national organizations such as Teach for America, Stand for Children and the KIPP Foundation, according to tax filings. The foundation also gave grants to scores of individual schools around the country as well as several charter school chains, including Uncommon Schools, which operates schools in New York and Massachusetts.
http://askville.amazon.com/address-Amazon-warehouse-Sparks-Nevada/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=9142399
Amazon.com Inc
1600 Newlands Dr E
Fernley, NV 89408
(775) 575-8000
http://www.amazon.com/Locations-Products-Careers/b?ie=UTF8&node=14237861
Fulfillment and Warehouse Centers
We receive, pack, and ship tens of millions of items from our global network of fulfillment centers.
North America
* New Castle, Delaware
* Coffeyville, Kansas
* Campbellsville, Kentucky
* Hebron, Kentucky
* Lexington, Kentucky
* Fernley, Nevada
* Red Rock, Nevada
* Chambersburg, Pennsylvania
* Carlisle, Pennsylvania
* Lewisberry, Pennsylvania
* Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas
http://www.kolotv.com/home/headlines/41846337.html?device=tablet
Close of facility in Red Rock, Nevada – Fernley still opened
http://www.housmans.com/boycottamazon.php
Amazon are Union Busters
Amazon have a little-reported, but undeniable record of preventing their work force from unionising. In 2001, Amazon.co.uk hired a US management consultancy organisation, The Burke Group, to assist in defeating a campaign by the Graphical, Paper and Media Union (GPMU, now part of Unite the Union) to achieve recognition in the Milton Keynes distribution depot. It was alleged that the company sacked four union members during the 2001 recognition drive and held a series of captive meetings with employees.
Unionbusting
http://www.housmans.com/boycottamazon.php
Tax dodging and union busting
Amazon’s workplace practices have come under fire in recent years. News outlets have detailed everything from the exhausting nature of warehouse work (employees can walk as much as 15 miles daily) to ambulances waiting outside a facility to collect workers who overheated because of a lack of air conditioning. Warehouse workers in Germany have walked out several times over wage issues. Some later traveled to Seattle to picket in front of Amazon’s headquarters.
Read more: How Amazon Crushed the Union Movement | TIME.com http://business.time.com/2014/01/16/how-amazon-crushed-the-union-movement/#ixzz2tHJIic4x
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos
Purchase of Wasington Post
http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/aug/16/jeff-bezos-washington-post
Bezo’s Politics called into questions
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/08/07/the-politics-of-jeff-bezos/
Donations to keep from being taxed
Family big support’s of charter schools
Donations on both sides of the aisle.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/08/05/jeff_bezos_inscrutable_libertarian_democrat.html
Donation to gay marriage equality
Donations to various candidates
Donations to defeat taxes
http://www.alternet.org/media/what-will-washington-post-be-under-jeff-bezos
But what has not made news is Bezos’ careful activism on behalf of big business and some of the richest Americans. In 2010, a coalition of Washington state public interest groups, teachers and socially minded wealthy Americans like Hanauer and Bill Gates Sr. supported Initiative 1098, which would have established the first-ever income tax in the state. If passed, the initiative would’ve established a tax on adjusted gross income for individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and $400,000 on married couples or domestic partners. By taxing high-income Washingtonians, the initiative would also have allowed for a reduction in property taxes and the expansion of certain business tax credits.
http://www.thenation.com/article/168109/protesters-confront-amazon-founder-jeff-bezos#
Amazon has also taken heat for its membership in ALEC—the American Legislative Executive Council—a corporate-funded group that backs right-wing politicians. ALEC also drafts and promotes laws like those that effectively disenfranchised large numbers of minority voters, the “Stand Your Ground” legislation that has resulted in the death of Trayvon Martin and a number of other people, and the anti-union laws brought to national attention by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
And Amazon was behind the curve in withdrawing from ALEC, lagging well behind companies such as KFC, Taco Bell, Coca-Cola, Proctor & Gamble, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Intuit, McDonald’s, PepsiCo and Kraft Foods. Most of these companies left ALEC more than a month ago, when revelations about its role in “Stand Your Ground” gave renewed momentum to demands that corporations leave it.
But then, ALEC has treated Amazon very well. It has defended the “Amazon loophole” that allows online sellers to avoid charging sales taxes the way other businesses do. This unfair advantage has given Amazon a lot more clout against neighborhood bookstores and retail book chains—clout it has used to drive many of them out of business.
Bezos is a libertarian who reportedly exults in the fact that Amazon’s loophole prevents the government from collecting taxes. He appears to exemplify a certain kind of Internet or computer entrepreneur—call them “digital libertarians”—who can be visionaries in technological and cultural ways and yet blind to social and economic realities.
http://news.rapgenius.com/The-bilderberg-group-list-of-attendees-for-2013-bilderberg-group-meeting-annotated#note-1837452
Bilderberg Group
https://dianeravitch.net/2013/08/06/jeff-bezos-worse-than-we-thought/
Privatization and Union-Busting
There’s one area where Bezos has been hyper-active, but it is largely unknown to the general public: education reform. A look at the Bezos Family Foundation, which was founded by Jackie and Mike Bezos but is financed primarily by Jeff Bezos, reveals a fairly aggressive effort in recent years to press forward with a neoliberal education agenda:
• The Bezos Foundation has donated to Education Reform Now, a nonprofit organization that funds attack advertisements against teachers’ unions and other advocacy efforts to promote test-based evaluations of teachers. Education Reform Now also sponsors Democrats for Education Reform.
• The Bezos Foundation provided $500,000 to NBC Universal to sponsor the Education Nation, a media series devoted to debating high-stakes testing, charter schools and other education reforms.
• The Bezos Foundation provided over $100,000 worth of Amazon stock to the League of Education Voters Foundation to help pass the education reform in Washington State. Last year, the group helped pass I-1240, a ballot measure that created a charter school system in Washington State. In many states, charter schools open the door for privatization by inviting for-profit charter management companies to take over public schools that are ostensibly run by nonprofits.
Other education philanthropy supported by the Bezos Foundation include KIPP, Teach for America and many individual charter schools, including privately funded math and science programs across the country.
But will Bezos’ interest in changing education policy affect his control of the Post? Only time will tell.
The most troubling part of Amazon’s record, as it might relate to Bezos’ ownership of thePost, is Amazon’s December 2010 decision to shut down WikiLeaks’s server access after the group published a trove of State Department cables. Robert McChesney, citing Amazon’s move to pull the plug on WikiLeaks, released a statement today condemning the sale.
Tony Hsieh – Zappos
The http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100601/why-i-sold-zappos.html
acquisition closed on November 1, at a valuation of $1.2 billion (based on Amazon’s stock price on the day of closing). Our investors at Sequoia made $248 million. Our board was replaced by a management committee that includes me, Jeff, two Amazon executives, and two Zappos executives. As CEO, I report to the committee every quarter, and Zappos is responsible for hitting revenue and profitability numbers. But unlike our former board of directors, our new management committee seems to understand the importance of our culture — the “social experiments” — to our long-term success. In fact, one Amazon distribution center recently began experimenting with its own version of Zappos’s policy of paying new employees $2,000 to quit if they’re unhappy with their jobs.
The acquisition closed on November 1, at a valuation of $1.2 billion (based on Amazon’s stock price on the day of closing). Our investors at Sequoia made $248 million. Our board was replaced by a management committee that includes me, Jeff, two Amazon executives, and two Zappos executives. As CEO, I report to the committee every quarter, and Zappos is responsible for hitting revenue and profitability numbers. But unlike our former board of directors, our new management committee seems to understand the importance of our culture — the “social experiments” — to our long-term success. In fact, one Amazon distribution center recently began experimenting with its own version of Zappos’s policy of paying new employees $2,000 to quit if they’re unhappy with their jobs.
Four years ago today on July 22, 2009, Amazon.com finalized an agreement to acquire Zappos.com for $807 million. Since both of these internet-based retail companies have a global reputation for their customer-centric missions and associated fanatic customer loyalty, the union of Amazon and Zappos was logical, expected, and controversy-free. By all reports today is an anniversary of AmaZappian bliss for leaders Jeff Bezos and Tony Hsieh, who have both been busy leveraging their success over the past four years.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/nov/10/add-education-zappos-downtown-investment-forays/
As Zappos prepares to relocate to downtown Las Vegas, its growing list of investments in the area now includes more than $1 million to lure dedicated teachers to the area’s schools.
Teach For America, which trains teachers to work in schools that serve children from households in poverty, will receive a donation of $300,000 from the company and $1.2 million from CEO Tony Hsieh.
Allison Serafin, a special consultant to Clark County Schools Superintendent Dwight Jones, also went through Teach For America’s program after graduating from Texas Christian University in political science and social work.
“It completely changed my life,” Serafin said. “I was able to see firsthand through the experience of teaching my sixth-graders that the students were brilliant and capable.”
Serafin, who works by contract with the School District, called Teach For America one of “many excellent partners who share the same commitment to students … and a commitment that all children can achieve.”
http://vator.tv/competition/las-vegas-valley-alternative-spring-break
Zappos Spring Break – Teach for America
What is it?
The Teach For America – Las Vegas Valley & the Zappos Family of Companies Alternative Spring Break is intended to spark bold, new innovations that expand opportunities and close the achievement gap in the Las Vegas Valley community. Applicants will submit a response to one of three challenges being posed via video by three Las Vegas Valley corps members. Twenty five students from across the country will be selected and will be invited to join Teach For America- Las Vegas Valley, the Zappos Family of Companies, and Las Vegas Valley community leaders for an all expenses paid alternative spring break trip to the Las Vegas Valley in March. Programming will be Monday to Friday (with travel on Sunday, the 18th and Saturday, the 24th) and will include travel, all meals, activities, and housing, which will be with current Las Vegas Valley corps members. Participants will continue the spirit of social innovation and tackle community, school, and business challenges in Las Vegas with the Zappos Family of Companies, Teach For America corps members and staff, and other Las Vegas Valley community leaders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_For_America
According to a 2009 USA Today article, Teach For America has been criticized by opponents who claim that the program replaces experienced teachers with brand-new employees who have had only five weeks of training during the summer and are brought in at beginners’ salary levels. John Wilson, executive director of the National Education Association, sent a memo in May 2009 stating that union leaders were “beginning to see school systems lay off teachers and then hire Teach For America college grads due to a contract they signed.” Wilson went on to say that Teach For America brings in “the least-prepared and the least-experienced teachers” into low-income schools and makes them “the teacher of record.”[16]
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/may/20/legislative-showdown-brewing-over-2-million-teach-/
Fixing Cities: Fixing the world
For Hsieh, though, this was part of the appeal. Transforming downtown Vegas would “ultimately help us attract and retain more employees for Zappos.” For the city itself, it would “help revitalize the economy.” More important, it would “inspire,” a word Hsieh uses often. Hsieh closed his presentation at the faux log cabin high above the desert with the sort of fact he seems to always have on hand: up to 75 percent of the world’s population will call cities home in our lifetime. “So,” he concluded, “if you fix cities, you kind of fix the world.”
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/01/23/tony-hsieh-las-vegas-zappos/
1,000 Teach for America Core Members
But now, he has to build the neighborhood. Much of the plans are already in the works. Plans are being finalized for 21,000 square feet of “co-working” space along the lines of General Assembly in New York. The small business development team is exploring building a back-office technology platform that the mom and pop shops can share to handle accounting, inventory, payroll and the like. Hsieh has made a $1.5 million deal with Teach for America to bring 1,000 core members and alumni to live and teach in the area. He is talking to the creators of the Burning Man festival about supplying art to the neighborhood. Party buses? He and his team are in the process of acquiring and revamping a dozen. Oh, and Hsieh is also part of a group trying to buy the Las Vegas 51s, the farm team; cue the new stadium plans.
There remains but one question for us to answer, dear reader: is there a way for the tax payers of Nevada to increase their stake in the excellence project that is Teach for America? Good news again. In his state-of-the-union address, Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval announced that the state is ponying up $2 million to bring still more TFA recruits to the Sagebrush State. Of course not everyone here is rolling out the welcome mat for the excellence express. Take the residents of Towne Terrace, a down-at-the-heels apartment complex in downtown Las Vegas, purchased by Zappos magnate (and Alexis Gonzales-Black employer) Tony Hseih who dreams of repopulating the entire area with more than 1,000 TFA corps members and alum. Except that the residents of the Towne Terrace made it exceedingly clear that they had no interest in being evicted to make way for excellence. Oh well, next time…
http://downtownproject.com/2012/teach-for-america-has-a-lot-to-celebrate/
In addition to this week’s activities and the recruiters’ conference in May, our local TFA team has more excitement to look forward to in the very near future. They’ll be welcoming their new corps members for induction week during June and will be relocating their offices to Downtown in July.
Alexis Gonzales-Black
Holacracy Implementation Team
Las Vegas, Nevada (Las Vegas, Nevada Area) Human Resources
http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexisgonzalesblack?_mSplash=1
http://www.doe.nv.gov/State_Board_Education_Members/
$50million in education initiatives? Downtown Projects
http://downtownproject.com/2011/downtown-project-designates-50-million-in-funding-for-education-initiatives/
Victor Wakefield ( married to Alexis Gonzales-Blavk) TFA Leadership Nevada
Attracting and retaining high-quality teachers to Las Vegas is an important aspect of Downtown Project’s education initiatives as it partners with Teach for America. “The largest ingredient in school quality, just like in urban success, is human capital—the talents of the teachers,” writes Glaeser. It’s a sentiment echoed by Victor Wakefield, executive director of Teach for America-Las Vegas Valley.
Victor Wakefield
http://www.teachforamerica.org/where-we-work/las-vegas-valley
Nevada funding for cash flush TFA
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/apr/11/money-okd-bring-150-more-teach-america-educators-c/
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/teach-for-america-rises-as-political-powerhouse-98586.html
http://www.communitiesinschools.org/press-room/resource/philanthropist-elaine-wynn-makes-5-million-donatio
Elaine Wynn Chair National Communities in Schools
Mrs. Wynn has been a member of the Communities In Schools’ board of directors since 2000, assuming the Chair position in 2007. Under Mrs. Wynn’s leadership, the organization has focused on data-driven results, including the release of a five-year, third-party evaluation, a return on investment report, and annual program results demonstrating that the organization’s cost-effective model is effective in urban, suburban, and rural communities.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/dec/17/governor-taps-elaine-wynn-state-education-board/
Kazuo Okada, a co-founder of Wynn Resorts Ltd. (WYNN) who is locked in a legal battle with his former partner Steve Wynn, accused the company of making a “suspicious” $135 million donation to a Macau university.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Reblogged this on McBlog.
“Amplify is focused on the gamification of teaching and the ELA digital curriculum is full of video games that emphasis reading, critical thinking and logic while collecting data on the student’s time spent reading, writing and vocabulary use for assessment. Indeed Amplify has designed a game called Lexica, a multi-player role playing game that takes place a fantasy world library and looked as impressive an any video game you’d find in the commercial market. Lexica offers players the ability to take on the identity of fanciful creatures and “trick them out” with new clothing, powers and prizes by gaining points from reading and a host of literary tasks and adventures. ”
I just knew the whole thing was going to be commercialized and monetized and teach them they need more and more and more STUFF.
Can they have one public space where someone isn’t selling them something? The reward for this is new clothes and prizes?
Is anyone surprised that market-based ed reformers produce curriculum that glorifies “tricking them out” in consumer goods? You know, we are just now discussing why we allowed junk food salespeople into schools. They were selling little kids garbage for 20 years. What is the check on this happening again with Amplify and all the other products they’re pushing? Are there any adults in the room this time, or is this up to “markets” like the junk food push was?
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/61270-amplify-debuts-digital-curriculum-at-sxswedu.html
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Explained: How many of the rich, powerful and greedy will destroy anything in their path to gain more wealth and power. Is this high level of a success a disease—a virus that will destroy civilization as we know it?
The saddest part is that our politicians are supposed to be there to represent everyone. Instead, they represent the wealthy and leave us with nothing.
Jeff Bezos attended a Montessori school through 3rd grade. Obviously his parents, who are now so involved in education deform, chose this education for him. I would really like to know why they don’t use their money and influence to expand this approach in the public sector if it was good enough for their own child. After all, the method was specifically developed to address the needs of poor children who were believed to be uneducable.
Exactly Emmy. I have often wondered why Montessori’s methods and curriculum have not been a huge part of the education conversation about how to reach at-risk learners early on…Montessori developed her program in the slums of Italy in the early 19th century. My own children went to one through 3rd grade and went into public school academically and socially years ahead (would have been way ahead of private schools, too). The Montessori curriculum is hands-on, developmentally appropriate, requires deep understanding of the material presented, develops mathematical and reading fluency, is NOT a mile wide and an inch deep, teaches life skills and responsibility at school and at home, and teaches cooperation, compassion, and peaceful conflict resolution. What more could a school want? I have yet to have anyone tell me why it has never been made mainstream (other than the idea of a child-sized classroom, furniture-wise).
Montessori programs can exclusively be found in schools patents and students choose.
Most of this “reform” garbage is down in Clark County School District, but Washoe County School District will likely follow suit with TFAs. The Board of Trustees there has for several years been big on “reform,” even to the point of appointing two Eli Broad superintendent academy superintendents. Health Morrison was the first one (he went to Charlotte, NC), and now the district is under a non-educator, Pedro Martinez, who worked in accounting for Chicago Public Schools when Arne Duncan was there to wreck it. Martinez has NO teaching experience whatsoever. He was hired by Morrison from CPS to oversee accounting for WCSD, but was fired after a year or so and went to Clark County. His job there was something like being over curriculum or academics, even though he had NO experience at ALL as a teacher. After a couple of years there, he was hired back at WCSD as superintendent when Morrison left though NOT qualified and selected over more qualified candidates.
Nevada has never been good for teachers, but now it has hit rock bottom. I feel bad for anybody who makes the mistake of working there as a teacher. The situation is much worse than it was six years ago when I worked there.
BTW, even though teachers can collectively bargain, the “unions” or “associations” in Nevada are horribly weak. They don’t do much for individual teachers, I can tell you from experience, and teachers can’t strike. Furthermore, the state is “right-to-work,” weakening them more.
Not much power in a union like that.
Exactly. I had to find out the hard way.
Wow. Excellent article. Great documentation. Seems as though Jeff Bezos ought to be squirming. Read a great article in Business Insider about working conditions in Bezos’s warehouses.
http://www.businessinsider.com/brutal-conditions-in-amazons-warehouses-2013-8
One of the Amazon contractors is going to the supreme court to fight paying workers for Amazon-mandated security checks.
Jeff Bezos can’t afford to pay his employees for the work that they do? Why should they donate an hour a day to Bezos?
“The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a case on whether Amazon.com workers should be compensated for time spent waiting to clear security checks.
Though the case revolves around an Amazon warehouse in Nevada, a ruling from the high court could apply to companies and their workers nationwide, including those in the Lehigh Valley.
But in the case before the Supreme Court, former temporary employees at Amazon contractor Integrity Staffing Solutions argued they should be compensated for lost time under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. The plaintiffs claimed in their 2010 lawsuit — Integrity Staffing Solutions Inc. v. Jesse Busk and Laurie Castro — that some days they spent nearly 30 minutes going through security screenings.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last April that the suit could go forward, prompting several similar lawsuits against Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, and its third-party warehouse contractors in federal courts around the country.
Integrity, which is represented in the high court by former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, argued that the 9th Circuit’s ruling conflicted with other court decisions that said workers do not need to be paid for similar post-work duties that are not a part of their regular work tasks.”
Paul Clement is a very prestigious lawyer. I can’t even imagine what he bills. Only the best for Bezos and Co when they’re trying to screw low wage workers out of the pay that they earned, right?
Why are so many ed reformers anti-labor, anti-worker, anti-middle class race to the bottom types?
http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-amazon-warehouse-lawsuit-supreme-court-20140303,0,4045994.story
At least Carnegie left us libraries after his reign. The new breed of plutocrats just suck public money out of publicly-funded institutions, in return for creating 9 dollar an hour jobs.
Just wait until Bezos gets rid of public libraries thanks to his “eBook/Kindle” scam. You don’t even OWN the “books” you download–you merely pay a user fee to download it. You are paying rent to Jeff Bezos and his ilk.
User fees for public institutions has always been a fantasy of libertarians.
Time to close my Amazon account.
The Oligarchs of USA — using their money to create devastation wherever they go.
After reading posts here day after day, week after week, month after month and getting more and more depressed (this one was by far the most depressing)…I read this today at boing boing and see hope (even if it is overseas and about apps) http://boingboing.net/2014/03/04/we-trust-children-with-freed.html
We trust children with freedom…not we test children to death!
Let’s all work towards a day when these posts, here, will be more like the boing boing post today. If it’s good enough for Sweden, shouldn’t it be good enough here. Our kids deserve a childhood too.
Why don’t the reformers see that our children are their future clients? An uneducated consumer is no consumer at all, in other words if you can’t get a job with a dumded down education, you can’t shop at Zappos or Amazon (and doesn’t Amazon realized many of their shoppers are hard pressed teachers?)
What a bunch of scum. This is why I don’t buy anything from Amazon any more. No way will I support this exploitive scum..
I do avoid Amazon so that I can support a book co-op but I quite like Zappos. I was about to make a $300 purchase. I guess I’ll have to take my business elsewhere.
I like how this conversation is headed…one by one Teachers, don’t buy your groceries or school supplies for your families and students from Wal Mart- the Walton Family Foundation supports vouchers and school choice. Don’t buy those books for your classroom libraries or student gifts from Amazon and please don’t buy those Danskos we teachers love so much from Zappos. And, last but not least , don’t stay in a Wynn Resort in Vegas. If all teachers stopped shopping at these four businesses , we could make a huge statement.
This is fun.
Did you know that the California Public Employees Retirement System’s top investment was in Wal-mart?
Did you know that California Public Employees Retirement System’s third highest investment was in Amazon?
This information is a bit dated, from 2011. Here is a link: http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/huge-pension-fund’s-6-3-billion-quarterly-services-stock-investments-wmt-mcd-amzn-dis-hd-v-cvs.html/
If I can paraphrase a statement from my youth: it’s 10 o’clock. Do you know where your retirement saving are?
Ops, I should have qualified it a bit more narrowly. Those are the top holdings of service sector companies. I’ll see if I can find more recent information.
Found a more recent list that claims to include them all. Here is a short list of companies often talked about here in order of their importance to California public employees retirement income.
1. Apple
3. Google
4. Microsoft
20. Wal-mart
21. Amazon
The list can be found here: http://stockzoa.com/fund/calpers/
Gee, I guess that makes it all OK.
It’s ten o’ clock. Do you know what your point is?
My point is that it is company profits that pay for public employee retirement.
So pay no attention to the Company Man behind the screen using company profits to bribe the Politician behind the other screen to rob public employees of their retirements.
Yuck. Divest!
Silly me, here I was thinking that customers and investors made company profits possible. I mean, it’s the investors that pay up front, so that answers the chicken and egg question.
Heaven forbid that a company would ever use the funds it gets from customers and investors in direct opposition to the interests of those same customers and investors. But sadly, all to too sadly, that way of giving it’s customers and investors the business has become business as usual in some sectors.
It takes a village to make a profit. Teachers and other public employees provide Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Walmart with funds, the firms use those funds to produce products that the investors hope consumers will want to buy. The iPod worked out well, the Zune not so much.
Yes, we all know the Cartoon — we get it piped into our brains on every channel from matrix cradle to matrix grave — the greatest story ever told of the “Jolly Old Banker” (JOB) and the “Man In The Hardhat” (MITH).
But one or two devilish details always get left out.
Like what percentage of the funds that Amazon™, Apple™, Microsoft™, Walmart™, etc.™ get from their customers and investors goes to the MITH to produce products and what percentage goes to the pocketses of politicians to suborn them from the duties of their offices.