Union Dispute Costing California Hundreds of Millions

The federal government has withheld more than $500 million in funding to local California transportation agencies since January and could withhold $1.6 billion for the year as the result of a complaint filed by transit union members, losses that could cost the state tens of thousands of jobs.

The U.S. Labor Department has forced the state to sit down with transit unions several times since California Gov. Jerry Brown passed modest retirement reforms in October 2012 to address a dire pension shortfall.

California has less than half the money needed to cover the $520 billion retirement costs, according to some estimates. The $290 billion pension deficit is triple the $96 billion general fund budget passed this year.

The governor’s office said that neither labor groups, nor the federal government has budged on the issue.

“Thus far, California’s efforts to resolve this issue with the federal government have proved fruitless,” Brown spokesman Jim Evans said in a statement. “We are actively working on solutions to ensure the state’s economy isn’t damaged by this dispute.”

Transit unions led by the Teamsters filed complaints with the Labor Department in November alleging that Brown’s pension reforms “impeded” collective bargaining rights guaranteed by the Urban Mass Transit Act, an obscure federal law passed nearly 50 years ago to maintain union agreements when private companies sold transit services to governments.

Via: WFB

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CARNEY ASKS 'WEST WING' ACTRESS HOW TO DO 'THE JACKAL'

White House press secretary Jay Carney welcomed a former star of NBC's The West Wing to Twitter by asking her to teach him how to perform "The Jackal." 

Allison Janney, who played Carney's fictional counterpart C.J. Cregg on the popular show,joined Twitter on Tuesday, and Carney tweeted at her, "Can you teach me how to do the jackal?"

Carney linked to a clip in which Janney's character performed Ronny Jordan's song, "The Jackal," in an episode on the popular show.

Via: Breitbart

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RNC officially bans Republican candidates from CNN and NBC primary debates

The Republican National Committee  voted on a strategy on Friday to try to prevent Republican presidential candidates from participating in 2016 primary debates with CNN and NBC.

In an unanimous vote at the committee’s summer meeting in Boston, the committee vowed to not partner with CNN and NBC for debates if they don’t drop their planned productions on potential Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, which they call “little more than extended commercials.”

NBC Entertainment says it plans to produce a miniseries on the former secretary of state. CNN has announced plans to produce a documentary on Clinton.

Here is the resolution language adopted by the RNC:

RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF MEDIA OBJECTIVITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY AND OF AN ORDERLY PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY DEBATE PROCESS

WHEREAS, former Secretary Hillary Clinton is likely to run for President in 2016, and CNN and NBC have both announced programming that amounts to little more than extended commercials promoting former Secretary Clinton; and

WHEREAS, these programming decisions are an attempt to show political favoritism and put a thumb on the scales for the next presidential election; and

WHEREAS, airing this programming will jeopardize will the credibility of CNN and NBC as supposedly unbiased news networks and undermine the perceived objectivity of the coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign by these networks; and

WHEREAS, Robert Greenblatt, Chairman of NBC Entertainment, contributed the maximum amount to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign committee, contributed $25,000 to Obama’s 2012 Victory Fund, and this year contributed $10,000 to the Democratic National Committee; therefore be it –

RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee calls on CNN and NBC to cancel the airing of these political ads masked as unbiased entertainment; and, be it further

RESOLVED, that if CNN and NBC continue to move forward with this and other such programming, the Republican National Committee will neither partner with these networks in the 2016 presidential primary debates nor sanction any primary debates they sponsor, and, be it finally

RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee shall endeavor to bring more order to the primary debates and ensure a reasonable number of debates, appropriate moderators and debate partners are chosen, and that other issues pertaining to the general nature of such debates are addressed.

Via: The Daily Caller

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Despite PM’s pleas, top House Dems open to testing Iran’s new leader

 In increasingly strident tones, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been telling his American friends that the purported moderation of Iran’s new president is a ploy aimed at relieving international pressure and buying the Islamic Republic more time to cross the nuclear threshold.

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But in ways both subtle and direct, some of those friends — among them some of Israel’s closest allies in Washington — are saying that maybe Hasan Rouhani is worth hearing out.

That was the message delivered this week by Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the second-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, while leading a tour of Israel for 36 fellow House Democrats.

“We have a new [Iranian] president,” Hoyer told JTA from Israel, where the stalwart supporter of the Jewish state was on his 13th tour as a congressman. “It makes sense for the [Obama] administration to test the sincerity, willingness and ability of the new president to accomplish the objective of assuring the West and Israel and the U.N. what the Iranians are not doing, and will reverse what they already have done, toward a nuclear capability.”

The divergence represents a rare public gap on a crucial security issue between pro-Israel lawmakers and Netanyahu, who in a succession of meetings this month with congressional delegations to Israel has lobbied hard to persuade American leaders to ignore Rouhani’s overtures.

Via: The Times of Israel

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Global warming is causing apples to lose crunch: study

IS THIS ANOTHER AL GORE SCARE MONGERING TACTIC AGAINST FRUIT?

The study which was published on Scientific Reports, analysed data gathered from 1970 to 2010 at two orchards in Japan and concluded that the change in global temperatures was having an effect on the taste and texture of apples, SHM reports.

The orchards chosen for the study were located in Japan’s Nagano and Aomori prefectures as the regions experienced no changes in cultivars or management practices for extended periods - ruling out any non-climatic factors which could influence the study.

The study measured levels of acid and sugar concentration, fruit firmness and watercore – a disease that causes water-soaked areas in an apple  – and found that while acidity, firmness and watercore decreased, the apples experienced a rise in sugar concentration.

Toshihiko Sugiura of the National Institute of Fruit Tree Science in Fujimoto and co-author of the study said that while the increased sweetness of the apple may serve as a positive attribute, the decrease in firmness is negative.

“We think most people like sweet and firm apple fruits, although everyone has his own taste. A soft apple is called 'Boke' in Japanese which means a dull or senile fruit," said Sugiura

[The results] "suggest that the taste and textural attributes of apples in the market are undergoing change from a long-term perspective, even though consumers might not perceive these subtle change.

Via: Food Magazine

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Mayor Bloomberg Says City Should Fingerprint Public Housing Residents

In a bid to boost security at public housing complexes, Mayor Michael Bloomberg this morning suggested fingerprinting residents so they can access their homes.

“What we really should have is fingerprinting to get in. And of course there’s an allegation that some of these apartments aren’t occupied by the people who originally have the lease,” said Mr. Bloomberg during his weekly radio sit-down with WOR’s John Gambling.

The mayor noted that, while New York City Housing Authority building house about five percent of the city’s population, they account for about 20 percent of city crime.

“We’ve just gotta find some ways to keep bringing crime down there,” he said, arguing that most people who live in the buildings want more police protection.

“If you have a stranger walking in the halls of your apartment building, don’t you want somebody to stop and say, ‘Who are you? Why’re you here?’ Because the locks on these doors, with so many people coming and going, you really can’t,” he said.

Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal came as he was responding to a federal judge reportedly preparing to try a case brought by NYCHA residents against so-called “vertical patrols” by police in the buildings.

“If you live in NYCHA housing, you should be really worried about this judge because if we stop these vertical patrols, crime can just get totally out-of-hand,” he said.

Via: Politicker

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Government acknowledges Area 51 in declassified spy plane documents

WASHINGTON — The government has finally recognized the existence of Area 51, according to the National Security Archive, which published recently obtained declassified CIA reports detailing and mapping the previously unacknowledged area in Nevada.

The National Security Archive at George Washington University published a report, "The Secret History of the U-2," on the spy planes that the Central Intelligence Agency relied on during the Cold War.

The Archive obtained declassified documents about the history of the U-2 — which reference Area 51 on numerous occasions — through a Freedom of Information Act request filed in 2005.

The origins of Area 51 are tightly bound up in the history of the U-2, for which the CIA needed a reliable and secret test facility in the U.S.

They found it in Groom Lake on April 12, 1955, according to “The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance,” an internal CIA history of the U-2 and OXCART programs written by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach that was declassified in fulfillment of the National Security Archive’s FOIA request.

OXCART was the code name for the program to develop the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance plane.

“On 12 April 1955, Richard Bissell and Col. Osmund Ritland (the senior Air Force officer on the project staff) flew over Nevada with Kelly Johnson on a small Beechcraft plane piloted by Lockheed’s chief test pilot, Tony LeVier,” an excerpt from the history reads. “They spotted what appeared to be an airstrip by a salt flat known as Groom Lake, near the northeast corner of the Atomic Energy Commission’s (AEC) Nevada Proving Ground.”

Via: Las Vegas Sun

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