Nestlé USA
Nestlé was lured to the area, executives say, by its proximity to lawmakers, regulators and lobbyists — and more than $16 million in state and county subsidies.
Washington Post, February 1, 2017
SOMEBODY NEEDS TO READ ARTICLE I
Joe Pizarchik spent more than seven years working on a regulation to protect streams from mountaintop removal coal mining.
It took Congress 25 hours to kill it.
The rule is just one of dozens enacted in the final months of the Obama administration that congressional Republicans have begun erasing under a once-obscure law — much to the dismay of agency staffers who hauled those regulations through the long process to implementation.
“My biggest disappointment is a majority in Congress ignored the will of the people,” said Pizarchik, who directed the Interior Department’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement from 2009 through January... .
“I believe there’s a good chance that, in a legal challenge, that a court will overturn Congress’ actions here as an unconstitutional usurpation of the executive branch’s powers,” he said.
Politico, February 11, 2017
IMAGINE AN ECONOMY WHERE WE ALL HAVE GOOD, WELL-PAYING JOBS AS REGULATORS
The regulation actually would have cost relatively few mining jobs and would have created nearly as many new jobs on the regulatory side, according to a government report.
Washington Post, February 19, 2017
MAKE COLLEGE BORING AGAIN
Frank Tomasulo has taught film studies at universities since 1977. Last year, he eliminated several classic movies from his syllabus for fear of offending his mostly liberal students. He no longer shows Birth of a Nation (because it deals with racism), the W.C. Fields film The Bank Dick (because it makes fun of blind people), or Tootsie.
“It brings up too many gender stereotypes,” said Dr. Tomasulo.
Such caution is part of the new normal for many faculty across the country as they adapt to an environment in which a word or turn of phrase — if perceived to be biased or insensitive — has the power to derail a career.
In recent years, hundreds of schools have created bias-response teams that field thousands of complaints from students from across the political spectrum who believe they have been slighted or slurred over race, gender, sexual orientation or political views. At some campuses, conservative students have posted clips of lectures to expose what they see as professors’ radical leftist views.
Wall Street Journal, February 28, 2017
WE’RE GUESSING SHE DIDN’T MAJOR IN ECONOMICS
Restaurant diners are footing the bill for rising minimum wages.
In lieu of steep menu price increases, many independent and regional chain restaurants in states including Arizona, California, Colorado and New York are adding surcharges of 3% to 4% to help off-set rising labor costs... .
Jamie Hampton, 37 years old, walked out of San Diego’s BO-beau kitchen + bar in January after seeing a notice about the surcharge.
She and her boyfriend chose a restaurant across the street that didn’t charge one.
Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2017
CAN WE TELL THE SATIRICAL POLITICIANS FROM THE REAL ONES?
The self-proclaimed most beautiful candidate in Serbia arrives in the sleepy town of Kovacica at midday, a loudspeaker perched atop his aging car. His name is Ljubisa Beli Preletacevic, or just Beli for short. He’s tall, blue-eyed and wearing his signature white suit and shoes, his long hair in a knot above his head. He tells NPR that he has a message for voters: