Alabama Republican Introduces Bill to Eliminate Overtime Pay

I wouldn’t have believed it had I not read it for myself from the official Congressional website.

U.S. Representative Martha Roby, a Republican from Alabama’s 2d Congressional District has introduced H.R. 1406, officially named the “Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013” which would END the requirement of the Fair Labor Standards Act for employers to pay Time-and-a-Half to employees for every hour worked over 40 in one week.

http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/1406

The Congressional Budget Office has reported on the bill, and in part wrote that:

Free Tibet

CHINA SLAMS DALAI LAMA; TIBETANS SELF-IMMOLATE

By GILLIAN WONG
— Nov. 12 8:18 PM EST

Jamphel Yeshi, a Tibetan exile, runs after setting himself on fire during a protest against the upcoming visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to India in New Delhi March 26, 2012. Hu is scheduled to attend the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Summit in India on March 29. REUTERS/Stringer (INDIA – Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST)

BEIJING (AP) — China accused the Dalai Lama of allying with Japanese right-wingers in an island dispute as a way of attacking China and blamed him for glorifying a wave of self-immolations among Tibetans. The comments came as state media reported two more Tibetans died after setting themselves on fire.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the Dalai Lama’s comments in Japan on the island dispute showed his “reactionary nature” and determination to split China apart under the guise of religion.

“To achieve his separatist goal, he associated with

Finally! Alabama is Top in the Nation in something other than football.

The only problem is, that – true to form – it’s in something bad.

The reader will recall that Alabama is the state where Lilly Ledbetter was screwed over by a bunch of men where she worked for Goodyear Tire and Rubber in Gadsden, by not being paid the same amount of money for doing the same amount of work, and then was denied her day before the United States Supreme Court, which then gave rise to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.

Of her case, United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote:

Lilly Ledbetter was a supervisor at Goodyear Tire and Rubber’s plant in Gadsden, Alabama, from 1979 until her retirement in 1998. For most of those years, she worked as an area manager, a position largely occupied by men. Initially, Ledbetter’s salary was in line with the salaries of men performing substantially similar work. Over time, however, her pay slipped in comparison to the pay of male area managers with equal or less seniority. By the end of 1997, Ledbetter was the only woman working as an area manager and the pay discrepancy between Ledbetter and her 15 male counterparts was stark: Ledbetter was paid $3,727 per month; the lowest paid male area manager received $4,286 per month, the highest paid, $5,236.

Face it: Alabama has a poor track record when it comes to equality.

Voted NO on Civil Rights.

The infamous Alabama HB-56, aka the “Hammon-Beason Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act,” which virtually makes being an Hispanic illegal.

Voted NO on Equal Pay for Equal Work.

What is Alabama’s major malfunction?

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Alabama‘s pay gap between men and women among largest in nation, study says

Published: Thursday, October 25, 2012, 2:09 PM Updated: Thursday, October 25, 2012, 2:11 PM

By Alex Walsh | awalsh@al.com

National Women’s Law Center

Alabama is home to the eighth-largest gap between what men and women earn, according to the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC).To compile its rankings, the NWLC looked at two figures for each state: the median annual wage for all male workers in a state, and the same figure for females. In Alabama, the median salary is $42,951 for male workers, and $31,862 for female workers, a difference of 25.8 percent.

Across the U.S., the median annual wage is $48,202 for men, and $37,118 for women, a 23 percent difference.

This research suggests that, across the state and nation, women have less economic opportunity overall, says Kate Gallagher Robbins, a senior policy analyst for the NWLC. The data is

Louisiana Monks challenge state law making their work a crime… making & selling caskets

It’d be funny if it weren’t sad.

Or, would it be sad if it weren’t funny?

Either way, it’s sad and funny.

Or, should that be ironic?

Whatever it is, it’s weird… and unjust.

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It’s Illegal for Monks to Sell Caskets In Louisiana

By Claire Suddath on June 01, 2012

The monks just want to sell caskets. That’s the simple plea of a relatively simple case, in which a Louisiana monastery—St. Joseph Abbey, about an hour outside New Orleans—is suing the Louisiana State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors for the right to sell their handmade wooden caskets. Only licensed funeral establishments can sell caskets in Louisiana, which means that St. Joseph’s monks would have to hire a funeral director, install embalming equipment, and construct a funeral parlor even though they have no plans to embalm the deceased or perform actual funerals. “They would have to take an exam about the whole panoply of funeral directing,” says Scott Bullock, an attorney with Institute for Justice, which is representing the monks. “It’s like telling someone who sells shoes that they have to first become a podiatrist.”

Photograph by David Moore/Gallery Stock

St. Joseph Abbey, founded in 1889 as part of the Order of Saint Benedict, has been producing caskets for as long as its monks can remember, but until recently, they were only used for the private burials of their own members. In the 1990s they built a few coffins for the funerals of local bishops and the Catholic community began to take notice. “People would come to our funerals and see them and ask