Truck drivers in California are bracing for the devastation from the state's new "gig economy" law that could threaten up to 70,000 jobs.
The law is intended to target the gig economy by revising the standards by which independent contractors are classified in order to force companies like Lyft and Uber to pay them like employees and provider employer benefits.
But the unintended consequences of the law appear to be spreading to other industries, including truck drivers.
California truck driver Danny Garcia told Neil Cavuto that the law could drive him out of business and into early retirement during an interview on Fox News Business.
"It's going to affect me pretty dramatically," Garcia said. "It's ultimately gonna shut down my business… I may have to think about early retirement or taking my truck outside of California perhaps."
The law would effect "owner-operator" truck drivers who own their own trucks and take jobs from different companies in order to determine their own schedules and negotiate for better wages.
As the United Kingdom struggles with how to curb its ongoing knife crime epidemic, one police department has proposed a solution for cutting down on attacks in homes: Replacing knives with blunt-tipped cutlery in the kitchens of domestic abuse victims.
What are the details?
The Nottinghamshire Police Department recently floated the idea to the county's city council as a way of preventing potential victims from being stabbed to death by their partners, The New York Times reported. While critics of the plan initially laughed it off, the authorities have already purchased 100 specially-manufactured knives to be distributed to at-risk survivors who have been attacked or threatened with a knife in the past.
A pilot program is being launched to gauge the efficacy of the plan before deciding whether to continue it past the end of the year, police say. According to The Daily Mail, the force received $1.5 million in taxpayer dollars to implement the initiative.
The knife trade-in scheme has been met with mixed reviews. According to the BBC, domestic abuse survivors have called it everything from "quite ludicrous" to "100 percent positive." A retired judge told the outlet it "could save lives," while psychologist and interpersonal abuse expert Dr. Jessica Eaton said on Twitter that the Nottingham police were "morons" for thinking blunt knives would prevent domestic attacks from happening.
Eaton told The Times, "The problem is not the sharpness of the knife. The problem is male violence."
She continued, "The risk comes from the offender, not the knife. We know that blunt trauma can cause death. Just because a knife has been blunted doesn't mean that it won't pierce the skin or kill someone."
But the Nottingham Police Department's new knife crime strategy manager says critics "got the whole idea wrong."
He told the BBC, "It's a very small trial, and it will always be part of a much wider range of measures that we are doing to safeguard and protect that victim. We will simply have these (knives) as an offer to somebody in appropriate circumstances and they can have them if they think they want them."
Anything else?
The U.K. has struggled for years to come up with schemes — such as "surrender" boxes — to reduce knife attacks in the country, but to no avail. The Daily Mail reported last week that stabbings in the nation hit a nine-year high, with more than 22,000 cases on record over the past 12 months.
Statesville tries to stop RV dealership from flying massive American flag
STATESVILLE, N.C. - The controversy over a massive American flag is now reaching a new level as the company responsible for flying the flag is rallying community support to fight the City of Statesville, which has reportedly filed a lawsuit to have the flag removed.
Camping World posted a message to its Facebook page on Saturday saying the city has filed an injunction against Camping World, fining the company $50 per day going back to Oct. 15, 2018. That totals nearly $11,000.
The company said it flies the 40-by-80-foot flag outside of its Gander RV location as a way of paying tribute to the country’s military veterans. The city had compromised last year by allowing an exemption for a larger flag than what city ordinance permits, but not the size that Camping World was seeking.
The company chose to fly the flag anyway and Camping World’s CEO has pushed for a change of the ordinance.
An online petition has also been started at Change.org in support of the company keeping the flag flying. As of Monday morning, more than 7,900 people had signed the petition.
Channel 9 has covered the debate for years. In 2015, the state said the store couldn't fly the flag because of a city ordinance.
The city's lawsuit claims a flag within 100 feet of a highway cannot be larger than 25 by 40 feet.
The company's CEO told Channel 9 similar flags are up at more than 200 stores across the country, including several cities in North Carolina, none of which have had any problems with them.
“I don’t care if it goes to $500 a day. It's not coming down,” Marcus Lemonis, CEO and chairman of Camping World and Gander RV, said.
Lemonis said it’s personal to him.
“My family has been car dealers, had been car dealers since the 1960s, and our key trademark was always flying our flag in our dealership in south Florida,” he said. “My family is largely immigrants of the country.”
Council minutes from October show leaders tried to amend the ordinance to allow a flag of this size, but the motion failed 3 to 5.
The City of Statesville sent Channel 9 a statement saying Gander RV applied to fly a flag far smaller than the one the company put up.
A spokesperson said the city only started fining the company after asking it to replace the flag several times.
The City of Oakland is in such dire financial straits that it is planning to use $2.9 million from state gas tax revenues to keep the city’s lights on, rather than using the money to fix pothole-riddled roads, for which the funding was intended.
The San Francisco Chroniclereported Wednesday that the city is facing severe financial shortfalls, despite a booming economy that has seen wealthier households relocate from San Francisco across the bay to gentrifying neighborhoods.
The problem is that the city’s costs are rising faster than its growing revenues, thanks partly to pension obligations — an increasingly common challenge for large, Democrat-run cities that made ambitious promises to public sector unions.
As Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf — famous for tipping off illegal aliens to an impending federal law enforcement sweep, in an effort to defend her “sanctuary city” — noted in her recent budget statement to the city council last week:
Though cranes are rising across the skyline and Oakland’s revenues are growing at a steady rate due to the strong real estate market, the City’s expenses continue to rise faster than revenues. Personnel-related expenses, particularly the cost of medical benefits and pensions – as well as insurance, utilities, and fuel costs – are growing at 2-3 times the rate of inflation and revenue growth.
The deficit for this year will be $25 million. As a result, the Chronicle notes, Oakland — which is generously extending benefits to illegal aliens — can barely keep its street lights on.
To deal with the crisis, the city is shifting money from pothole repair to street lighting, even though the money raised by the 2017 gas tax must be used for transportation.
The Chronicle notes that Oakland’s believes that street lighting qualifies:
Enter the state gas tax.
The mayor is proposing to use the $2.9 million to pay for the street-lighting portion of the shortfall, then use the savings to keep the parks open.
According to Article 19 of the state Constitution, gas tax money is to be used for the “research, planning, construction, improvement, maintenance and operation of public streets and highways (and their related public facilities for nonmotorized traffic).”
Oakland officials feel that gives them the cover to use the tax money to light the streets as well.
The city will still apparently have other funds, both from the gas tax and its own revenues, to use for pothole repair — though less than it would otherwise have had.
Republicans attempted to repeal the gas tax hike in a 2018 ballot initiative, but the state government gave the measure a misleading title. As a result, the measure failed, though polls showed a majority of Californians opposed the hike.
The budget notes that the city will spend $150,000 per year on a legal fund to assist illegal aliens facing deportation.
Hundreds of dead animals were bought from China, Vietnam and elsewhere for use in research on lab cats back home.
March 19, 2019, 5:30 AM PDT
By Dareh Gregorian
U.S. government scientists bought hundreds of dogs and cats from "Asian meat markets" and conducted experiments that included feeding their remains to healthy lab cats for needless research, according to a disturbing watchdog report being released Tuesday.
Other experiments at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's lab in Maryland included feeding dog remains to cats and injecting cat remains into mice, the report by the White Coat Waste Project found. The group is a non-profit that combats wasteful government spending on animal testing.
"It's crazy," Jim Keen, a former USDA scientist, told NBC News, which obtained a copy of the report. "Cannibal cats, cats eating dogs — I don't see the logic."
The experiments — some of which the agency said in scientific reports were aimed at studying different forms of a parasite that causes the food-borne illness toxoplasmosis — are believed to have been conducted between 2003 and 2015. The animals that were euthanized to be used as lab food included over 400 dogs from Colombia, Brazil and Vietnam and over 100 cats from China and Ethiopia.
"Some of these cats and dogs were purchased by the government from the same Asian meat markets that the U.S. Congress roundly condemned in a House Resolution" last year, said the report by the WCW.
The group plans on releasing its findings, which were culled from the USDA's own research publications, in a report to Congress entitled, "USDA Kitten Cannibalism."
A feline purchased by the USDA facility in Maryland stands on a table in this undated photo obtained by a FOIA request. Felines, like the one shown, are used to breed kittens for taxoplasmosis experiments.WCW
The experiments were carried out at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service's Animal Parasitic Disease Laboratory in Beltsville, Md. The facility was already under fire from some lawmakers for killing cats intentionally infected with T. Gondii, the parasite that causes toxoplasmosis.
"The details of these kitten experiments keep getting worse and they need to end now," said Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., the lead Republican co-sponsor of legislation aimed at stopping the cat killings.
"The fact that the USDA has been rounding up pets and other innocent dogs and cats in foreign countries —including at Chinese meat markets condemned by Congress — killing them and feeding them to lab cats back here in the States is simply disgusting and unjustifiable."
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., called the revelations "deeply disturbing."
"We can advance scientific discovery while treating animals humanely, and American taxpayers have every right to expect our government will meet that standard," he said in a statement, while urging passage of the legislation, entitled Kittens in Traumatic Testing Ends Now — or KITTEN.
The agency has been breeding kittens at the lab since 1982, and feeding them raw meat to infect them with T. Gondii. Scientists harvest the parasites from their stool for two to three weeks, and then euthanize and incinerate the cats. Cats are used because they're the only host animal that produces parasite eggs.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says toxoplasmosis is one of the leading causes of death from foodborne illnesses in the U.S. While over 40 million Americans are believed to carry the parasite without an issue, exposure can have "severe consequences" for people who are pregnant or have a compromised immune system.
Keen, who left the USDA after blowing the whistle on mistreatmentof livestock in Nebraska in 2015, said the Maryland experiments have helped combat toxoplasmosis, but that scientists there haven't had any major breakthroughs in about 20 years. He and WCW vice president of advocacy and public policy Justin Goodman contend that scientists can continue their work with the samples they already have, and don't need to keep infecting and killing kittens.
"They just don't need to do it anymore; it's scientifically unnecessary," Goodman said.
Keen was also at a loss to explain the scientific purpose of the "cannibal" experiments. The USDA is supposed to protect the food supply, but cats and dogs aren't part of the food chain in the United States.
"It's totally unrelated to the food safety mission," Keen said. "We shouldn't be paying for that as taxpayers."
Keen, who's now a private citizen, learned about the experiments while researching the Maryland lab's scientific publications. The publications said the dogs and cats were killed in Asia, South America and Africa, and then tissues from the animals were sent to Maryland.
Some of the publications detailed feeding tissue from cat hearts, brains and tongues to other cats. Others involved feeding the same parts of dogs to the lab cats, and in some cases, injecting the tissue from the infected cats into mice.
The studies conducted using animals from China said "the cats were killed humanely according to PRC laws for slaughtering of food animal (sic)." The WCW report calls that claim "concerning and deceptive," and pointed to the 2018 Congressional resolution condemning the Chinese facilities. The resolution said the treatment of dogs and cats in the Chinese facilities "would breach anti-cruelty laws in the United States."
The WCW report contends the experiments were needless.
"These were all abnormal diets for cats, dogs and mice so likely irrelevant to natural toxoplasmosis biology. Their scientific relevance and justification is questionable, at best, as is their relevance to American public health since we do not consume cats and dogs, and the practice is now outlawed in U.S.," the report says.
The USDA, which did not respond to requests for comment, has defended the cat testing in the past, calling it "life-saving research."
The WCW says almost 4,000 cats have been killed since the testing began, and that the experiments have cost taxpayers about $22 million to date.
The group on Thursday decried the policy affecting some 1,600 unreinforced masonry buildings that are on average 90 years old, many in areas with a predominantly black population, The Oregonian/OregonLive reports.
The policy "exacerbates a long history of systemic and structural betrayals of trust and policies of displacement, demolition, and dispossession predicated on classism, racism, and white supremacy," the group said.
The NAACP said the policy will make it tougher for owners of brick buildings to get loans and will discourage investment. It says that means buildings will have to be sold, and that developers will demolish and redevelop, increasing the cost to live there and forcing current residents out.
"It speaks to our houses of worship and everything about the black presence in the North-Northeast area," said the Rev. E.D. Mondaine, a pastor at Celebration Tabernacle Church in north Portland and president of the Portland NAACP chapter.
City officials say the ordinance approved in October is part of an effort ultimately aimed at upgrading old buildings to withstand an earthquake, though seismic upgrades likely wouldn't be required for at least 20 years. Such upgrades could cost brick-building owners millions of dollars.
Experts say Portland is at risk because there's close to a 50 percent chance of a giant earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the Oregon coast in the next 50 years.
The warning signs and a requirement that building owners must file a record of compliance is "really just a disclosure," said Alex Cousins, a spokesman for the city Bureau of Development Services. "That's the purpose behind it."
The warning signs are to go up on public buildings this month, and on most other buildings by March 1. The warning on them says: "This is an unreinforced masonry building. Unreinforced masonry buildings may be unsafe in the event of a major earthquake."
In related action, a nonprofit coalition of Portland brick building owners recently filed a lawsuit seeking to block the ordinance, arguing it's unconstitutional under free-speech and due-process rights.
"The government is forcing private property owners to basically broadcast the government's message instead of their own," said John DiLorenzo, an attorney for the group.
Also, a coalition of music venues called MusicPortland has sided with the NAACP, saying the ordinance threatens some 30 of its music venues.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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