Public Unions Step Up Political Activity
The Public employee unions have never been shy about in-your-face political activity to defend their turf and make sure they get for their members what they think the members deserve. The onslaught of activity has increased in these difficult economic times.
In San Francisco, a number of public unions filed suit this week to throw a pension reform measure off the ballot. That reform was introduced by the city’s public defender. He was concerned that his budget is being eaten away to cover employees’ pension costs.
SEIU and other public employee members plan to rally in protests against the opening of the movie "The Expendables," because Arnold Schwarzenegger has a bit role in the movie. The unions want to express opposition to the governor’s furlough policies.
Why Wasn’t I on the Journo-list?
The worst thing about a conspiracy theory isn’t when you discover that the conspiracy is true.
The worst thing is finding out that the conspiracy is true and that you weren’t in on it.
Which is why I’ve been so hurt by the revelations that important journalists – many of them friends and one-time colleagues — were members of a listserv called Journo-list and were exchanging interesting gossip and trying to plot story lines and saying many, many opinionated things that don’t look good when repeated publicly.
Does Oxy Chief Measure Up?
Ray Irani
gets too much money, according to the California State Teachers’
Retirement System and an activist investor group. Last week the two
said they’d fight to get their own slate of directors on the board of
Irani’s employer, Occidental Petroleum Corp. of Westwood.
Irani certainly hauls a bundle.
Last year, he made off with $31.4 million in salary, bonuses and stock
awards. If you throw in the value of past options he exercised during
the year and stock grants that vested, he got close to $128 million.
But is that too much? Let’s compare:
Sports, Pop Culture and Everything Else
The following is the introduction of a new weekly column, "Sports, Pop Culture and Everything Else."
Sports and politics – both bring out a level of passion unmatched in society’s great arena. You could make the argument that people rally behind a team – democrat or republican – in the same they root for their favorite sports team or vice versa.
Regardless, the idea behind
this new weekly column is to escape the realities of politics and
discuss the world of sports. We’ll talk popular culture as well:
Hollywood, music, Internet, media and … just about everything else.
My
journalism career began in the sports department at The Sacramento Bee
and continued to NBC Sports before I transitioned into the world of
politics as editor of PublicCEO.com, a local government site. Even now, I still write for
NBA.com.
So, let’s begin with this initial column …