"Part-Time" Is A Way For Corporations To Abuse Workers

The post below is just a part of an excellent article by Adelle Waldman in The New York Times. I highly recommend you read the entire article! 

In recent years, part-time work has become the default at many large chain employers, an involuntary status imposed on large numbers of their lowest-level employees. As of December, almost four and a half million American workers reported working part time but said they would prefer full-time jobs.

I assumed that the reason part-time work was less desirable than full-time work was that by definition, it meant less money — and fewer or no benefits. What I didn’t understand was that part-time work today also has a particular predatory logic, shifting economic risk from employers to employees. And because part-time work has become so ubiquitous in certain predominantly low-wage sectors of the economy, many workers are unable to find full-time alternatives. They end up trapped in jobs that don’t pay enough to live on and aren’t predictable enough to plan a life around.

There are several reasons employers have come to prefer part-time workers. For one thing, they’re cheaper: By employing two or more employees to work shorter hours, an employer can avoid paying for the benefits it would owe if it assigned all the hours to a single employee.

But another, newer advantage for employers is flexibility. Technology now enables businesses to track customer flow to the minute and schedule just enough employees to handle the anticipated workload. Because part-time workers aren’t guaranteed a minimum number of hours, employers can cut their hours if they don’t anticipate having enough business to keep them busy. If business picks up unexpectedly, employers have a large reserve of part-time workers desperate for more hours, who can be called in on short notice.

Part-time work can also be a means of control. Because employers have total discretion over hours, they can use reduced schedules to punish employees who complain or seem likely to unionize — even though workers can’t legally be fired for union-related activity — while more pliant workers are rewarded with better schedules.

In 2005, a revealing memo written by M. Susan Chambers, then Walmart’s executive vice president for benefits, who was working with the consulting firm McKinsey, was obtained by The New York Times. In it, Ms. Chambers articulated plans to hire more part-time workers as a way of cutting costs. At the time, only around 20 percent of Walmart’s employees were part time. The following year, The Times reported that Walmart executives had told Wall Street analysts that they had a specific target: to double the company’s share of part-time workers, to 40 percent. Walmart denied that it had set such a goal, but in the years since, it has exceeded that mark.

It’s not just Walmart. Target, TJX Companies, Kohl’s and Starbucks all describe their median employee, based primarily on salary and role, as a part-time worker. Many jobs that were once decent — they didn’t make workers rich, but they were adequate — have quietly morphed into something unsustainable. . . .

The shift to part-time works means that focusing exclusively on hourly pay can be misleading. Walmart, for example, paid frontline hourly employees an average of $17.50 as of last month — and recently announced plans to raise that to more than $18 an hour. Given that just a few years ago, progressives were animated by the “Fight for $15,” these numbers can seem encouraging. The Bloomberg columnist Conor Sen wrote on social media last year that “Walmart’s probably a better employer at this point than most child care providers and a lot of the jobs in higher ed.”

The problem is that most Walmart employees don’t make $36,400, the annualized equivalent of $17.50 an hour at 40 hours a week. Last year, the median Walmart worker made 25 percent less than that, $27,326 — equivalent to an average of 30 hours a week. And that’s the median; many Walmart workers worked less than that.

Likewise, at Target, where pay starts at $15 an hour, the median employee doesn’t make $31,200, the annualized full-time equivalent, but $25,993. The median employee of TJX (owner of such stores as TJ Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods) makes $13,884. The median Kohl’s employee makes $12,819.

Those numbers, though low, are nevertheless higher than median pay at Starbucks, a company known for its generous benefits. To be eligible for those benefits, however, an employee must work at least 20 hours a week. At $15 an hour — the rate Starbucks said it was raising barista pay to in 2022 — 20 hours a week would amount to $15,600 a year. But in 2022 the median Starbucks worker made $12,254 a year, which is lower than the federal poverty level for a single person. . . .

I’ve come to think that every time we talk about hourly wages without talking about hours, we’re giving employers a pass for the subtler and more insidious way they’re mistreating their employees. . . .

To the extent that the shift to part-time work has been noticed by the larger world, it has often undermined rather than increased sympathy for workers. For decades, middle- and upper-class Americans have been encouraged to believe that American workers are hopelessly unskilled or lazy. . . .

Policies undertaken to increase corporate profits at the expense of workers’ well-being are then held up as evidence of the workers’ poor character. There is poor character at play here. It’s just not that of workers.

Republicans Want To Put Poor Children Into Dangerous Jobs

This very troubling op-ed is by the editorial board of The New York Times: 

In February, the Department of Labor announced that it had discovered 102 teenagers working in hazardous conditions for a company that cleans meatpacking equipment at factories around the country, a violation of federal standards. The minors, ages 13 to 17, were working with dangerous chemicals and cleaning brisket saws and head splitters; three of them suffered injuries, including one with caustic burns.

Ten of those children worked in Arkansas, including six at a factory owned by the state’s second-largest private employer, Tyson Foods. Rather than taking immediate action to tighten standards and prevent further exploitation of children, Arkansas went the opposite direction. Earlier this month, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, signed legislation that would actually make it easier for companies to put children to work. The bill eliminated a requirement that children under 16 get a state work permit before being employed, a process that required them to verify their age and get the permission of a parent or guardian.

Arkansas is at the vanguard of a concerted effort by business lobbyists and Republican legislators to roll back federal and state regulations that have been in place for decades to protect children from abuse. Echoing that philosophy, bills are moving through at least nine other state legislatures that would expand work hours for children, lift restrictions on hazardous occupations, allow them to work in locations that serve alcohol, or lower the state minimum wage for minors. The Labor Department says there has been a 69 percent increase since 2018 in the illegal employment of children.

The response in these states is not to protect those children from exploitation, but instead to make it legal. Voters in these states may support deregulation, but they may not know that businesses can use these bills to work children harder, cut their wages and put them in danger. There is time for them to persuade lawmakers to say no to these abuses. . . .

Lawmakers in these states have been vigorously lobbied by industry groups who like the flexibility of teenage employees and say that more children are needed in the work force to make up for labor shortages. One of the principal lobbying organizations pushing these bills in several states is the National Federation of Independent Business, a conservative group that supports Republican candidates and has long opposed most forms of regulation, as well as the Affordable Care Act. It has issued news releases praising lawmakers for passing bills that let businesses hire more minors for longer hours, and taking credit for supporting these efforts.

The Arkansas governor’s spokesperson said in a statement that the work permit requirement was “an arbitrary burden on parents,” but opponents noted that many child workers don’t have parents or guardians to look after their interests. In the cleaning company case, several of the child workers were unaccompanied minors who recently came over the southern border, according to their lawyers. Soon, they won’t even have the state to approve their employment or working conditions.

The real target of these rollbacks is not after-school jobs at the corner hardware store; they will have a much bigger effect on a labor force that includes many unaccompanied migrant children who work long hours to make or package products sold by big companies like General Mills, J. Crew, Target, Whole Foods and PepsiCo. As a recent New York Times investigation documented, children are being widely employed across the country in exhausting and often dangerous jobs working for some of the biggest names in American retailing and manufacturing. . . .

Despite the evidence that more children are being exploited and hurt in this way, state lawmakers are passing bills that defy the federal standards. They are inviting a court challenge, and, in effect, daring the Labor Department to come after them, knowing the department often lacks the manpower to prevent violations of federal law. The Ohio Senate, which passed a bill earlier this month extending working hours for minors under 16, in violation of federal standards, also approved a resolution urging Congress to do the same.

One of the worst bills, introduced by Republicans in Iowa, would allow 14-year-olds to work in industrial freezers, meat coolers and industrial laundries, and 15-year-olds to lift heavy items onto shelves. It is backed by, among others, the independent business federation, the Iowa Grocery Industry Association, and Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group backed by Charles Koch, the industrialist who supported many national efforts to deregulate businesses.

If states will not perform a role that has been fundamental for a century — protecting workers from abuse — the federal government will have to increase its efforts to do so. After the Times investigation was published, the Biden administration announced a series of new efforts to crack down on illegal child labor, many of which hold promise as possible deterrents.

The Labor Department said it would intensify its investigations of business violations, not just by direct employers of children but also by the larger companies that contract with those employers, or that use children in their supply chain. In many cases, big companies use contractors or staffing agencies to hire children and then claim they had nothing to do with the abuses. Some of those agencies shut down and reopen under new names when they are fined, said Meredith Stewart, a senior supervising attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The companies that hire them should be held accountable. The department also has the authority to seize any products that are made using illegal child labor, even through the use of contractors. Seema Nanda, the department’s chief legal officer, said in an interview that it would use that authority aggressively, as well as every other litigation tool available. . . .

The administration lacks all the tools to do the job right. Because its budget has been held flat by Congress, the Wage and Hour Division lost 12 percent of its staff between 2010 and 2019, and Ms. Nanda’s office lost more than 100 lawyers, so the Labor Department doesn’t have enough investigators to effectively pursue illegal child labor practices. In addition, under current law, the maximum fine for a labor violation by a company is $15,138 per child — often little more than the cost of doing business for big companies.

Comprehensive immigration reform would be the best insurance that migrant children have the protections they need. If families can stay together, minors will be less vulnerable to abuse and better able to seek legal protection.

The administration has asked Congress for more enforcement money in its current budget, and for higher penalties. Neither request is likely to be granted, and immigration reform seems far in the distance. Protections against “oppressive child labor,”however, have been part of American law since the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938; dismantling those safeguards now puts young lives at risk.

It Was All So Unnecessary - And More Need To Be Punished

Like the rest of America, I was horrified by the videos of Memphis police officers beating Tyre Nichols to death. And it was all unnecessary.

Nichols was stopped for a traffic violation (supposedly reckless driving). It should have just resulted in a traffic ticket.

But the officers that stopped him approached him in a very aggressive manner, demanding he get out of the car. When he asked politely why he was stopped. They physically removed him from the car and roughly shoved him to the ground. There was no reason for that, and I'm not surprised that Nichols was scared and ran away.

When he was apprehended, the officers decided to get revenge for his escape. They beat him with their fists, with a metal nightstick, and kicked him in the head. None of that was necessary either. There were enough officers to safely put the 140 pound man on the ground and handcuff him. There was no reason for anyone to be injured -- not the victim or the officers.

The five officers who beat Nichols have been charge with the crimes they committed, and that's a good thing. They were nothing more than criminals wearing badges.

But they were not the only officers who failed to do their duty that night.

A police officers job is not over once a person is apprehended. The job is not over until the person is safely in jail -- or in the hospital, if medical attention is necessary.

After Nichols was subdued and handcuffed, he was leaned against a car. He fell over several times. It should have been obvious to all of the dozen or so officers standing around that he was in medical distress. But they ignored it. Nichols laid on the ground for over 20 minutes before receiving any medical help. 

That may or may not have contributed to Nichols' death. But one thing is sure -- every officer at the scene failed to do their duty! They all need to be punished.

Sexual Abuse In U.S. Federal Women's Prisons

The following is part of an article by Ja'han Jones at MSNBC.com:

On Tuesday, a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee held a hearing on its investigation into the disturbing raft of sexual abuse against women at facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. In his opening statement, the chair, Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., said the BOP “is failing systemically to prevent, detect and address sexual abuse of prisoners by its own employees.”

The findings are the result of an eight-month investigation. According to the subcommittee, over the past decade Bureau of Prisons employees sexually abused incarcerated women in at least 19 of the 29 federal facilities — about two-thirds — where women have been held. Investigators found at least 134 cases to be substantiated, but Ossoff added a caveat.

“Given the fear of retaliation by survivors of sexual abuse; the apparent apathy by senior BOP officials at the facility, regional office and headquarters levels; and severe shortcomings in the investigative practices implemented by BOP’s Office of Internal Affairs and the Department of Justice inspector general, I suspect the extent of abuse is significantly wider.” 

Here are some of the other key findings in the investigative report:

• The BOP has failed to prevent, detect and stop recurring sexual abuse in at least four federal facilities — including abuse by senior prison officials. (For example, at FCI Dublin, a federal prison in California, both the warden and the chaplain were among several employees who were found to have sexually abused incarcerated women.)
• The BOP has failed to effectively implement the Prison Rape Elimination Act, a 2003 law meant to establish better standards and oversight to prevent sexual abuse in federal prisons — whether committed by incarcerated people or prison officials. (Just last week, the officer at FCI Dublin whose job was to ensure the prison complied with PREA was convicted of sexually abusing incarcerated women.) 
• The failures have been systemic. Prisons were able to pass mandatory PREA audits during a time when officials there said there was a “culture of abuse” in the facilities. 
• The BOP has a backlog of about 8,000 internal affairs cases that has built up over more than five years, including hundreds of sexual abuse allegations against staff that haven’t been investigated.

We Have A Police Violence Problem. How Can We Fix It?

We have a problem here in the United States. It is a problem of police violence -- especially against African-Americans. It's not a new problem. It's been with us for a long time, and it's caused by our continuing problem with racism -- especially in our societal institutions like law enforcement.

Donald Trump and his racist followers don't see a problem. That doesn't mean't it doesn't exist -- just that it's going to be even harder to solve. But solve it we must, because our Constitution guarantees all citizens (not just white citizens) the protection of the rule of law.

The following is part of an excellent editorial from the editorial board of The New York Times. They have some suggestions as to how we can begin to solve this serious problem.

Last week it was George Floyd, who died while restrained by a police officer in the middle of a Minneapolis street in daylight, though he posed no physical threat. His alleged offense? Passing a counterfeit bill to buy a pack of cigarettes. Before him it was Breonna Taylor, an emergency room technician in Louisville, Ky., shot dead in her own apartment by officers who used a battering ram to burst through her front door.

Before Ms. Taylor it was Laquan McDonald. And Eric Garner. And Michael Brown. And Sandra Bland. And Tamir Rice. And Walter Scott. And Alton Sterling. And Philando Castile. And Botham Jean. And Amadou Diallo.

The list goes on and on, and on and on. Black Americans brutalized or killed by law enforcement officers, who rarely if ever face consequences for their actions. Derek Chauvin, the officer accused of kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck until he was dead, had 18 prior complaints filed against him.

In the name of all these men and women and countless more, this is why thousands of Americans have taken to the streets — to express a rage born of despair. Despair that their government has failed to provide one of the most fundamental protections in the Constitution: the right to life, and to not be deprived of that life without due process of law. Stop killing us. . . .

Here are some steps to move the country toward a place where citizens don’t live in fear of those charged with serving and protecting them:

USE-OF-FORCE POLICIES

In departments with policies that sharply limit when, where and how police officers may use force, shootings and killings by the police are much lower. For instance, police officers should be required to try de-escalation before resorting to the use of force. They should not be allowed to choke people. Officers should be required to stop other officers from using excessive force.

TRANSPARENCY

When the police do use deadly force, the public should be able to know about it. That means getting rid of provisions like Section 50-a of New York’s civil rights law, which prevents the release of police personnel and disciplinary records and allows bad officers to continue abusing their power with impunity.

ACCOUNTABILITY

Police officers enjoy a web of protections against the consequences of their behavior on the job. From the legal doctrine of qualified immunity to state and local police indemnification laws, it is nearly impossible for a plaintiff to get any justice, even when an officer unquestionably violated his or her rights.

UNION CONTRACTS

Across the country, powerful police unions negotiate favorable contracts that shield the police from investigation and discourage citizens from bringing complaints. The contracts make it easier to hire, and harder to fire, officers with documented histories of bad behavior. Cities are under no obligation to agree to these terms, and they shouldn’t.

LEVERAGE FEDERAL FUNDING

Following the beating of Rodney King and the Los Angeles riots in 1992, Congress empowered the Justice Department to oversee local police departments. That led to scores of investigations and long-overdue reforms in places like Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo. But the federal government also has other tools. It can deny grants to police departments that fail to impose strict use-of-force policies or refuse to discipline officers who engage in misconduct.

DEMILITARIZATION

When you have a grenade launcher, even peaceful protesters look like enemy combatants. It’s no surprise that as police departments have stocked up on military-grade equipment, they have acted more aggressively. The Obama administration restricted the flow of certain types of equipment, but President Trump lifted those restrictions in 2017.

Religious Sex Abuse - It Was Never Just The Catholics

(Cartoon image is by Clay Jones at claytoonz.com.)

For the last few years now, Americans have heard about sex abuse by religious officials in the Catholic Church. The church tried to hide the abuse by not reporting it to law enforcement, and by shifting the guilty priests from one diocese to another. But it was never a problem just among Catholics.

Religious officials in all religions tend to be put on a pedestal, and considered next to infallible. And that kind of reverence without criticism lends itself to abuse. Now we learn that the problem also exists in the nation's largest protestant sect -- Southern Baptists. Here is just part of an expose in the Houston Chronicle:

More than 250 people who worked or volunteered in Southern Baptist churches have been charged with sex crimes, an investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News reveals.

It's not just a recent problem: In all, since 1998, roughly 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced allegations of sexual misconduct, the newspapers found. That includes those who were convicted, credibly accused and successfully sued, and those who confessed or resigned. More of them worked in Texas than in any other state.

They left behind more than 700 victims, many of them shunned by their churches, left to themselves to rebuild their lives. Some were urged to forgive their abusers or to get abortions.

About 220 offenders have been convicted or took plea deals, and dozens of cases are pending. They were pastors. Ministers. Youth pastors. Sunday school teachers. Deacons. Church volunteers.

Nearly 100 are still held in prisons stretching from Sacramento County, Calif., to Hillsborough County, Fla., state and federal records show. Scores of others cut deals and served no time. More than 100 are registered sex offenders. Some still work in Southern Baptist churches today.

Journalists in the two newsrooms spent more than six months reviewing thousands of pages of court, prison and police records and conducting hundreds of interviews. They built a database of former leaders in Southern Baptist churches who have been convicted of sex crimes.

The investigation reveals that:

• At least 35 church pastors, employees and volunteers who exhibited predatory behavior were still able to find jobs at churches during the past two decades. In some cases, church leaders apparently failed to alert law enforcement about complaints or to warn other congregations about allegations of misconduct.

• Several past presidents and prominent leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention are among those criticized by victims for concealing or mishandling abuse complaints within their own churches or seminaries.

• Some registered sex offenders returned to the pulpit. Others remain there, including a Houston preacher who sexually assaulted a teenager and now is the principal officer of a Houston nonprofit that works with student organizations, federal records show. Its name: Touching the Future Today Inc.

• Many of the victims were adolescents who were molested, sent explicit photos or texts, exposed to pornography, photographed nude, or repeatedly raped by youth pastors. Some victims as young as 3 were molested or raped inside pastors' studies and Sunday school classrooms. A few were adults — women and men who sought pastoral guidance and instead say they were seduced or sexually assaulted. . . .

Several factors make it likely that the abuse is even more widespread than can be documented: Victims of sexual assault come forward at a low rate; many cases in churches are handled internally; and many Southern Baptist churches are in rural communities where media coverage is sparse.

It's clear, however, that SBC leaders have long been aware of the problem.

Trump's Inhumane Border Policy Is Not Over Yet

(Cartoon image is by Matt Wuerker at Politico.com.)

Is the inhumane tearing of children (even infants and toddlers) away from their parents at the border over now? Not by a long shot. His rather suspect executive order just put a temporary hold on the situation, and provides an out for Trump to resume the policy (by saying their would be no separation as long as space was available). He is now going to federal court to ask that children be allowed to be detained indefinitely and be detained in facilities that cannot meet the minimum state and federal standards for youth facilities. In other words, the abuse continues.

Here is part of an excellent article in Time Magazine by Molly Ball:

It is a crisis Donald Trump created and always had the power to solve. At detention facilities across the country, children are penned in cages, crying out piteously for the parents from whom they have been torn by border agents on orders from Washington. Some children may never see their mother or father again.

In a presidency marked by serial outrages, the scandal over family separations at the southern border has been unlike any other. The President didn’t just say something offensive, he intentionally turned the machinery of the state on some of the world’s most vulnerable humans. He applied his signature approach–brutal toughness–to his trademark issue, immigration. He greeted criticism of his policy with mockery, falsehoods and blame-casting. He handcuffed the Republican Party and hamstrung understaffed federal agencies. All the themes of Trump’s character and Administration were embodied in this wrenching calamity.

At first, Trump embraced the outrage, as he so often does. Even as the pictures, video and audio began to trickle out of the detention facilities, and awful stories spread–a woman deported without her son; older children changing younger ones’ diapers–supporters predicted that Trump would stand his ground. . . .

But the images of young children sobbing for their parents created an outcry that neither Trump nor his opponents anticipated. Recriminations poured in, some of them from unexpected quarters. Evangelical leader Franklin Graham called it “disgraceful.” Former First Lady Laura Bush wrote a scathing op-ed. Even Melania Trump issued an unusual statement deploring the situation and worked her husband behind the scenes, according to a White House official. The President and his party faced a toxic scenario in an election year that was already looking grim. “It’s political insanity,” a top Senate Republican aide told TIME. “It will kill us.”

And so Trump did something he has rarely done as President: he backed down from the fight. At the urging of advisers, he signed an Executive Order on June 20 in an attempt to end family separations and instead detain children and parents together. . . .

The inhumanity unfolding at the border has not just been a test for Trump. It has been, and will continue to be, a moment of reckoning for America. Trump has often bet that if he just rides out the current frenzy, the anger will fade and some new controversy will erupt. He thinks shock is a temporary condition, moral outrage is phony posturing and that the American people can be numbed to just about anything. If there is a Trump creed, it’s that there’s no such thing as going too far. That may have found its limit with putting children in cages. But as his “zero tolerance” policy heads toward a seemingly inevitable court battle, the jailing of kids may become the jailing of families–and we will see how much American hearts can withstand. . . .

What happens next for the parents and children detained at the border is just as murky. The President’s Executive Order calls for families to be detained together, ending the separation issue but creating new complications. It is likely to be challenged in court. Immigrants’ advocates fear that his move could defuse the public pressure as family separations give way to family internment camps. And there is still no system in place to reunite the thousands of children and parents already separated from one another.

Whatever misery this mess brings will lay squarely at the feet of the President. But what price he will pay remains unclear. Trump was elected on the strength of some searing truths about the American political system–that Washington was broken and politicians of both parties were hopeless lightweights–and also some searing falsehoods, including that a frightening, inhuman foreign threat was to blame for the nation’s problems. He placed a cynical bet on the American character, that our capacity for empathy only went so far. The outcome of the humanitarian crisis at the border will be a test of whether that wager was right.

Farenthold Won't Seek Re-Election - But He Should Resign

(Photo of Rep. Blake Farenthold is from Crossroads Today at ABC Newscenter 25.)

One of the more egregious sexual harassers in the U.S. Congress is Rep. Blake Farenthold (who represents District 27 in Texas). He was accused by one of his aides of repeated sexual harassment, and when she complained about it, he fired her. The taxpayers wound up paying the woman $84,000 to settle her claim out of court.

Farenthold tried at first to deny that the claims were true. But now other aides have come forward to verify them. It seems that sexual harassment, laced with repeated temper tantrums, were commonplace in Farenthold's office. Farenthold also tried to avoid repercussions by saying he would repay the $84,000, but that just dodges the real issue -- that sexual harassers and abusers have no place in the U.S. Congress.

Now he is trying a different approach. He has announced that he will not seek re-election in the 2018 midterm elections. That is also unacceptable! It means he will continue to serve in the House for more than another year (until his replacement is sworn in January of 2019).

I am not alone in my demand that Farenthold resign. A new poll (see above) shows that 60% of the public thinks he should resign, while only 6% say he should not resign. And that includes 57% of the Republican base believing he should resign. The public doesn't want sex harassers and abuser from either party serving in the United States Congress. And they are right -- allowing these sex offenders to continue to serve puts a black mark on our government, and gives the impression that such behavior is at least somewhat acceptable.

It is time for his Republican cohorts in Congress to speak up and demand his resignation. So far, their silence has been deafening. They were quick to demand the resignation of Democratic Rep. Conyers for similar behavior (and he did resign). Was that just hypocritical party politics? Shouldn't the same rules apply to members of both parties?

The chart above reflects the results of a new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between December 10th and 12th of a random national sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,338 registered voters), and has a 3.5 point margin of error.

Trump's Still Facing Problems Over Sex Allegations

When he was elected, Donald Trump probably thought the allegations against him by women accusing him of sexual abuse and harassment were over. If so, then he was wrong. Those allegations are alive and well, and a recent poll showed that 70% of Americans want Congress to investigate the allegations.

Part of this is because sexual harassment and abuse have become headline news lately as powerful men in the entertainment, news and political sectors have been accused and lost their jobs. And part is because Trump gleefully jumped into the fray by tweeting about the sexual charges of others (Democrats, media, and entertainment industry). He must have thought the presidency made him immune, even though his sex allegations are as bad or worse than those made against others.

But he is not immune, and the public is still concerned about Trump's sexual crimes. This is verified by two new polls on the subject. They show that between 53% to 58% of the public believes the women making the accusations against Trump. And perhaps even more troubling for Trump, about 53% to to 57% think Trump should resign if those charges are true. The polls are:

Rasmussen Poll -- done on December 12th and 13th of a random national sample of 1,000 likely voters, with a 3 point margin of error.

Public Policy Polling -- done on December 11th and 12th of a random national sample of 862 registered voters, with a 3.3 point margin of error.

Public's Not Happy With How Sexual Misconduct Is Handled

Poll after poll has shown that the general public thinks sexual harassment, abuse, and assault are serious problems in the United States -- and too many men in power are abusing their power to make sexual demands. They want the problem dealt with.

How are the entities where sexual misconduct has been discovered dealt with it? Not too well, according to the public.

The news media has done the best. They have 48% approval for their actions and 42% disapproval -- a net approval gap of 6 points. No one else comes close to that. The entertainment industry has a negative 13 point net approval gap. The Democratic Party has a negative 22 point net approval gap. The Republican Party has a negative 39 point net approval gap. And Donald Trump has a negative 41 point net approval gap.

Those are some pretty bad numbers -- especially for the politicians, who have an election coming up in less than a year.

The chart above uses numbers from a new Quinnipiac University Poll -- done between November 29th and December 4th of a random national sample of 1,747 adults, with a 2.8 point margin of error.

With His Own Background, Trump's Tweets Are Hypocritical

Trump has been silent about the sexual harassment/abuse of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, but he broke his silence to tweet about an inappropriate picture of Democrat Al Franken -- even though that picture doesn't come close to the sexual harassment/abuse allegations leveled against Moore (which included a 14 year old girl), or the allegations against Trump himself (which he cavalierly dismissed as "fake news"). It is the height of hypocrisy for him to comment on Democrats while giving Republicans a free ride.

Here are 14 very credible reasons why it is inappropriate for Trump to be making accusations against anyone regarding sexual harassment/abuse:

1. Ninni Laaksonen, former Miss Finland, says “Trump stood right next to me and suddenly he squeezed my butt” in July 2006. 

2. Jessica Drake says Trump grabbed and kissed her without consent, then offered her $10,000 for sex in 2006.  

3. Karena Virginia says she was groped by Trump at the U.S. Open in 1998. 

4. Cathy Heller says Trump grabbed her and attempted to kiss her at Mar-a-lago in 1997. 

5. Summer Zervos, an Apprentice contestant, says Trump kissed her, grabbed her breasts and began “thrusting his genitals” in 2007.  

6. Kristin Andersonsays Trump reached under her skirt and grabbed her vagina through her underwear in the early 1990s. 

7. Jessica Leeds says Trump lifted up the armrest, grabbed her breasts and reached his hand up her skirt in the early 1980s. 

8. Rachel Crooks says she was sexually assaulted by Trump in an elevator in Trump Tower in 2005. 

9. Mindy McGillivray says Trump groped her while she was attending a concert at Mar-a-lago in 2003. 

10. Natasha Stoynoff says Trump pushed her against a wall and jammed his tongue down her throat at Mar-a-lago in 2005. 

11. Jennifer Murphy, another Apprentice contestant, says Trump kissed her on the lips after a job interview in 2005.  

12. Cassandra Searles says Trump grabbed her ass and invited her to his hotel room in 2013. 

13. Temple Taggart McDowell, Former Miss Utah, says Trump kissed her directly on the lips the first time she met him in 1997. 

14. Jill Harth says Trump repeatedly sexually harassed her and groped her underneath a table in 1993.

And this doesn't even include the 13 year old girl Trump was witnessed having sex with (who by definition cannot give consent). Trump is stupid to be commenting on someone else's problems, when he has a terrible history of sexual harassment/abuse of his own.

A Majority of Voters Say Trump Is Abusing His Power

These charts are from the results recorded in the latest Quinnipiac University Poll -- done between May 17th and 23rd of a random national sample of 1,404 voters, with a 3 point margin of error.

Trump was already unhappy with all the poll numbers, and I expect these latest numbers will drive the narcissist up the wall. It shows that a majority of Americans (54%) say Trump is abusing his presidential powers, while only 43% disagree. That's an 11 point difference, and it shows that the public doesn't trust the current president.

The chart at the bottom show his job approval. It is not improving, and currently stands at 37% approval and 55% disapproval. This remains an administration in deep trouble.

Blacks And Whites Have Vastly Different View Of Police

These charts are from a newly-released survey by the prestigious Pew Research Center. The survey was done between August 16th and September 12th of a random national sample of 4,538 respondents, and has a margin of error of 2.4 points.

The survey makes it clear why this country cannot seem to solve its problem of institutional racism in police departments across the nation. While Blacks clearly see the problem, most Whites still deny its existence. Whites want to believe that the instances of police abuse and the murder of unarmed people by police are just isolated incidents perpetrated by a few bad apples. Blacks see them as indicative of a broader problem -- institutional racism.

Whites also mostly see the demonstrations against police violence as anti-police bias, while Blacks see them as an effort to hold police responsible for their actions.

Institutional racism exists, and it is rampant in our policing agencies. It is a problem that must be addressed. Unfortunately, it won't be fixed as long as most Whites refuse to admit it exists.