J. David Cox Sr., national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 9,000 employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, today issued the following statement in response to the Senate's 52-46 vote to confirm Scott Pruitt as EPA Administrator:
"As head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt will be responsible for leading the agency's efforts to ensure the safety of our air and water, repair our aging infrastructure of water lines and treatment plants, clean up hazardous waste sites, and enforce environmental laws and regulations that help protect our precious natural resources. EPA's workforce is smaller today than it was in 1999, despite a significant growth in responsibilities. Starving this vital agency of the resources it needs to carry out its important work threatens the health and safety of all Americans. The biologists, scientists, lab technicians, engineers, and other civil servants who work at the EPA must be able to do their jobs without political interference or fear of retribution. Ensuring the independence of our career civil servants at EPA and all federal agencies is an essential part of our democratic government and something that we will fight to maintain."
AFGE logo. (PRNewsFoto/American Federation of Government Employees)
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union, representing 700,000 workers in the federal government and the government of the District of Columbia.
For the latest AFGE news and information, visit the AFGE Media Center.
Trump poses with his brain trust. Mark Lennihan/AP Photo
By Bert Spector, Northeastern University Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump made much of his business experience, claiming he’s been “creating jobs and rebuilding neighborhoods my entire adult life.” The fact that he was from the business world rather than a career politician was something that appealed to many of his supporters. It’s easy to understand the appeal of a president as CEO. The U.S. president is indisputably the chief executive of a massive, complex, global structure known as the federal government. And if the performance of our national economy is vital to the well-being of us all, why not believe that Trump’s experience running a large company equips him to effectively manage a nation? Instead of a “fine-tuned machine,” however, the opening weeks of the Trump administration have revealed a White House that’s chaotic, disorganized and anything but efficient. Examples include rushed and poorly constructed executive orders, a dysfunctional national security team and unclear and even contradictory messages emanating from multiple administrative spokespeople, which frequently clash with the tweets of the president himself. Senator John McCain succinctly summed up the growing sentiment even some Republicans are feeling: “Nobody knows who’s in charge.” So why the seeming contradiction between his businessman credentials and chaotic governing style? Well for one thing, Trump wasn’t a genuine CEO. That is, he didn’t run a major public corporation with shareholders and a board of directors that could hold him to account. Instead, he was the head of a family-owned, private web of enterprises. Regardless of the title he gave himself, the position arguably ill-equipped him for the demands of the presidency.
Catching up on the news, Senator?Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo
Public accountability Several years ago, I explored the distinction between public and private companies in detail when the American Bar Association invited me to write about what young corporate lawyers needed to understand about how business works. Based on that research, I want to point to an important set of distinctions between public corporations and private businesses, and what it all means for President Trump. Public corporations are companies that offer their stock to pretty much anyone via organized exchanges or by some over-the-counter mechanism. In order to protect investors, the government created the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which imposes an obligation of transparency on public corporations that does not apply to private businesses like the Trump Organization. The SEC, for example, requires the CEO of public corporations to make full and public disclosures of their financial position. Annual 10-K reports, quarterly 10-Q’s and occasional special 8-K’s require disclosure of operating expenses, significant partnerships, liabilities, strategies, risks and plans. Additionally, an independent firm overseen by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board conducts an audit of these financial statements to ensure thoroughness and accuracy. Finally, the CEO, along with the chief financial officer, is criminally liable for falsification or manipulation of the company’s reports. Remember the 2001 Enron scandal? CEO Jeffrey Skilling was convicted of conspiracy, fraud and insider trading and initially sentenced to 24 years in prison.
Former Enron CEO Skilling learned the hard way that the buck stopped with him.Pat Sullivan/AP Photo
Internal governance Then there is the matter of internal governance. The CEO of a public company is subject to an array of constraints and a varying but always substantial degree of oversight. There are boards of directors, of course, that review all major strategic decisions, among other duties. And there are separate committees that assess CEO performance and determine compensation, composed entirely of independent or outside directors without any ongoing involvement in running the business. Whole categories of CEO decisions, including mergers and acquisitions, changes in the corporation’s charter and executive compensation packages, are subject to the opinion of shareholders and directors. In addition, the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act requires – for now – regular nonbinding shareholder votes on the compensation packages of top executives. And then there’s this critical fact: well-governed firms tend to outperform poorly governed ones, often dramatically. And that’s because of factors like a strong board of directors, more transparency, a responsiveness to shareholders, thorough and independent audits and so forth.
Trump celebrates the opening of his Taj Mahal Casino Resort in Atlantic City in 1990.Charles Rex Arbogast/AP Photo
Trump’s business None of the obligations listed above applied to Trump, who was owner, chairman and president of the Trump Organization, a family-owned limited liability company (LLC) that has owned and run hundreds of businesses involving real estate, hotels, golf courses, private jet rentals, beauty pageants and even bottled water. LLCs are specifically designed to offer owners tax advantages, maximum flexibility and financial and legal protections without either the benefits (such as access to equity capital markets) or the many obligations of a public corporation. For example, as I noted above, a corporate CEO is required by law to allow scrutiny of the financial consequences of his or her decisions by others. As such, CEOs know the value of having a strong executive team able to serve as a sounding board and participate in key strategic decisions. Trump, by contrast, as the head of a family business was accountable to no one and reportedly ran his company that way. His executive team comprised his children and people who are loyal to him, and his decision-making authority was unconstrained by any internal governance mechanisms. Decisions concerning what businesses to start or exit, how much money to borrow and at what interest rates, how to market products and services, and how – or even whether – to pay suppliers or treat customers were made centrally and not subject to review. Clearly, this poorly equips Trump to be president and accountable to lawmakers, the courts and ultimately the voters. Another important aspect of the public corporation is the notion of transparency and the degree to which it enables accountability. A lack of transparency and reluctance to engage in open disclosure characterized the formulation of Trump’s immigration ban that was quickly overturned in federal court. That same tendency toward secrecy was manifest throughout the campaign, such as when he refused to disclose much about his health (besides this cursory “note”) or release any of his tax returns. While there’s no law that requires a candidate to divulge either health or tax status, that lack of transparency kept potentially vital information from U.S. voters. And Trump’s continuing lack of transparency as president has kept experts and advisers in the dark, leading to precisely the confusion, mixed messages and dysfunction that have characterized these early weeks. And, of course, this can quickly lead to a continuing erosion of public trust. Trump, it should be noted, made one stab at a public company: Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts. That was an unmitigated disaster, leading to five separate declarations of bankruptcy before finally going under, all this while other casino companies thrived. Public investors ignored all the signs in favor of the showmanship and glitz of the Trump brand and, as a result, lost millions of dollars. Trump allotted himself a huge salary and bonuses, corporate perks and special merchandising deals. What is especially telling about this experience is that, rather than speaking on behalf of fiduciary responsibilities for the best interests of the corporation, Trump noted, “I make great deals for myself.” Multiplicity of voices There is no need to be overly naive here. Some CEOs also operate in a highly centralized manner, expecting obedience rather than participation from direct reports. All business executives expect a shared commitment from their employees to their corporate goals and value dependability, cooperation and loyalty from subordinates. But the involvement of a multiplicity of voices with diverse perspectives and different backgrounds and fields of expertise improves the quality of resulting decisions. Impulsive decision-making by an individual or small, cloistered group of followers can and often will lead to disastrous results. What lies ahead Virtually every U.S. president, ranging from the great to the inconsequential and even the disastrous, have emerged from one of two groups: career politicians or generals. So why not a CEO president? Without question, a background in politics does not guarantee an effective presidency. Abraham Lincoln, the consensus choice among historians for the best president ever, was a career politician, but so was his disastrous successor, Andrew Johnson. Likewise, we can think of many traits of an effective corporate CEO that could serve a president well: transparency and accountability, responsiveness to internal governance and commitment to the interest of the overall corporation over and above self-enrichment. Sadly, that is not Trump’s background. His experience overseeing an interconnected tangle of LLCs and his one disastrous term as CEO of a public corporation suggest a poor background to be chief executive of the United States. As such, “nobody knows who’s in charge” may be the mantra for years to come.
About Today's Contributor: Bert Spector, Associate Professor of International Business and Strategy at the D'Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University
Austin-based, all female pop/rock band THE MRSare set to release their self-titled debut album March 10th, featuring new single "Blink Of An Eye" now available at all digital outlets.
The band, which promotes themes of female empowerment, will perform at SXSW March 12th at The Belmont and March 18 at Texas Rockfest, where they'll play cuts off their debut album just after its worldwide release. The 11-track, self-produced album is designed to connect with today's contemporary woman who strives to live a full and active life, without limitations. They are sexy, modern, liberated and unapologetic wives and mothers who rock.
THE MRS includes founder Andra Liemandt (drums), Jenny Mason(bass), Mandy Prater (guitar/vocals), and Larissa Ness (keyboard/vocals). They broke out onto the music scene with two Top 20 Hot AC singles titled "Enough" and "You Told Me" from their EP, Enough.
Band founder Andra Liemandtwas inspired to study the craft of drumming after taking her daughter to music lessons. Feeling inspired, she sought out like-minded female musicians who would form the nucleus of THE MRS. After logging many hours in the studio, the band's passion and message came to fruition and their movement started to gain traction and pay off.
THE MRS has been featured on Good Morning America, Huffington Post, People, Cosmopolitan and Buzzfeed among other outlets.
Their music speaks to the modern woman, exploring the daily reality of wives and mothers, while offering a support network and a message of empowerment, in an effort to shift the cultural tide. The group's purpose is to uplift and strengthen women and community, so they can live their best life ever and deflect any negative self-talk that may occur when they look in the mirror. Emphasis is placed on personal relationships, careers, marriages, families and friendships.
THE MRS is excited to share their debut full length with fans and looks forward to live performance dates and touring in the near future.
Michael Jackson'sThrillerhas become the first album in RIAA Gold & Platinum Program history to be certified 33x Diamond forUnited Statessales and streams, it was announced by the Recording Industry of America (RIAA), the Estate ofMichael Jackson, Epic Records and Legacy Recordings (the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment).
Thriller is still the ONLY album ever to have surpassed the RIAA's 30x million mark in U.S. sales.
"Thirty five years later, Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' remains as timeless and iconic as ever," said Cary Sherman, Chairman and CEO, Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). "'Thriller' has now become the first and only album to achieve an RIAA 33X Diamond Award, a moment forever etched in Gold & Platinum Program history. Congratulations on another 'Thriller' milestone."
The same day as Thriller's record-breaking certification, Michael Jackson'sBad has also achieved RIAA 10x Diamond Award status in recognition of United States sales and streams of 10 million units.
With sales now topping more than 105 million copies worldwide, Thriller has solidified its status as the best-selling album of all-time while Michael Jackson's overall worldwide record sales exceed the 1 billion threshold. During his extraordinary career, Michael Jackson released 13 No.1 singles and became one of only a handful of artists to be inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Guinness Book of World Records recognized Jackson as the Most Successful Entertainer of All Time and Thriller as the World's Top-Selling Album of All Time. His artistry, choreography and music continue to inspire generations of pop, soul, R&B and hip-hop artists and fans.
Executives from Sony Music Entertainment and the Estate ofMichael Jacksonwere inLos Angelesin a special plaque presentation honoring the most recent RIAA Gold & Platinum Program milestones achieved byThrillerandBad. Featured in the photo left to right are: Doug Morris(Chief Executive Officer, Sony Music),Rob Stringer(Chairman & CEO, Columbia Records),John Branca(Co-Executor of the Estate ofMichael Jackson),Richard Story(President, Commercial Music Group), Antonio "L.A." Reid (Chairman & CEO, Epic Records), andKaren Langford(Estate ofMichael Jackson).
About Thriller Michael Jackson's masterpiece Thriller, produced by Quincy Jones (and co-produced by Michael Jackson on his own songs), won a record setting 8 Grammys, more than any album ever, and has been earning awards and setting new standards of success since its release on November 30, 1982. Thriller spent nearly 2 -1/2 years on the Billboard album chart and holds a modern day record of 37 weeks at #1. It was the first album in history to spend each of its first 80 weeks in the album chart's Top 10, a feat only reached by one other album in the more than three decades since. During its 112th week on Billboard's album chart, it became the first title ever to be certified RIAA 20x Diamond (October 30, 1984) and RIAA 30x Diamond (December 16, 2015). Worldwide, Thriller went to #1 in practically every country in the world, including the UK, France, Italy, Australia, Denmark, Belgium, South Africa, Spain, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada and apartheid South Africa.
The importance of Thriller was recognized by Michael Jackson's industry peers at the Grammys. Thriller was nominated in a record breaking 12 categories, and won a history making eight, which stands as the record for most Grammy Awards to be won by any album. Seven of those Grammys that year were awarded to Michael for: Album of the Year; Record of the Year ("Beat It"); Best Male Pop Vocal Performance ("Thriller"); Best Pop Vocal Performance ("Thriller"); Best Male Rock Vocal Performance ("Beat It"); Best Male R&B Vocal Performance ("Billie Jean"); Best R&B Song ("Billie Jean"). (Michael's eighth Grammy that year was in the Best Recording for Children - Single or Album, Musical or Spoken category for "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" which also gave Michael the record for the most Grammys won by a single artist in one year). That same year, Michael Jackson took home eight American Music Awards and three MTV Video Music Awards.
The following year, "The Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller" took home the Best Video Album trophy at the 27th Annual Grammy Awards.
More than just an album, Thriller has remained a global cultural multi-media phenomenon for both the 20th and the 21st centuries, smashing musical barriers and changing the frontiers of pop music forever. The music on Thriller is so dynamic and singular that it defied any definition of rock, pop or soul that had gone before. "Beat It" was a new kind of pop-rock hybrid and demolished the longstanding segregation between black and white music with Eddie Van Halen's incendiary guitar. On "The Girl Is Mine," a black man and a white man bantered about the same girl.
On the same album were songs like the African-rooted "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" and the rhythm and blues-based "Billie Jean." No one had ever released an album with such a vast range of material.
"Perhaps Michael's most significant racial trailblazing came with music videos," wrote Joe Vogel in Man in the Music. Fascinated with the fledgling art form, Michael wanted to tell a story and entertain on a grand scale and, in fact, called these masterpieces "short films," not "music videos." Despite the luscious cinematography, dramatic narrative and spectacular choreography of "Billie Jean," a fledgling MTV, which was programming white rock artists almost exclusively, refused to play it. Epic persisted.
Once the wall came crashing down, MTV's ratings soared and a door was opened for a generation of African American artists. "He was MTV's Jackie Robinson," said cultural critic Touré. Next, came the unforgettable short film for "Beat It," which featured Michael bringing two gangs together through the power of music and dance. And then there was "Thriller." Premiered at the AVCO Theatre inLos Angelesin 1983, it sold out every night of its limited run.
No other video before or since has generated such excitement and has such a hold on our attention, such that more than 30 years later we all share it as a collective memory and it remains the only music video to be inducted into the elite National Film Registry by the Library of Congress
About Bad One of the 30 top-selling albums of all-time, Michael Jackson'sBad--the artist's third solo studio collection for Epic Records and the eagerly-awaited successor to Thriller--was released on August 31, 1987, and generated a record setting five consecutive #1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, a feat that took 25 years to match, with some of Michael's most iconic tracks.
The BAD album is "a fantastical, thematically eclectic, sonically innovative musical odyssey" and, along with Thriller, was one of the best and most influential pop albums of all time. It was monumental in many ways; Michael wrote nine of the album's eleven tracks and co-produced the entire album with Quincy Jones. The album was #1 around the world, made history with five consecutive #1 singles on the Billboard chart, produced ten chart-topping singles, nine ground breaking short films and to date, the Bad album has generated over 45 Million units in sales around the world. Bad was nominated for six Grammys and won two; the album earned Michael the first-ever Video Vanguard Award at the MTV VMA Awards.
Songs on the original album are: "Bad," "The Way You Make Me Feel," "Speed Demon," "Liberian Girl," "Just Good Friends" featuring Stevie Wonder, "Another Part of Me," "Man in the Mirror," "I Just Can't Stop Loving You," "Dirty Diana," "Smooth Criminal," with "Leave Me Alone" added to the CD version of the album once released.
Today's email is rather worrying.... apparently, the British Government is toying with the idea of imprisoning anyone daring exposing abuses of human rights? Wow! Last time I checked, we were still living in a democratic nation. WTF happened? The email is from our friends at 38 Degrees. Feel free to read it and, of course, act accordingly. Thanks in advance. Stay safe! Loup Dargent
The Email: "Dear Loup,
The Government’s legal advisers have revealed plans to lock up people who expose things like human rights abuses. They could face prison sentences of up to 14 years.Under these terrifying new laws, even journalists could face charges just because they were sent certain information. [1]
People who reveal things that some would rather the public didn’t know are called whistleblowers. Often they share things that we need to know, because there are serious consequences if the information is hidden. For example, Nurse Helene Donnelly, who helped expose the situation in Mid Staffs NHS trust. [2]
But draft plans to imprison some whistleblowers for up to 14 years were floated by government advisers late last night. It looks like they’re testing the idea to see whether or not the public would let these scary plans go ahead. And that’s where we come in. A huge public outcry would force the government to reject these plans before they get any further than just a draft.
If you believe that no one should face 14 years in prison for exposing truths that we deserve to know, then please sign the petition. It takes less than a minute:
Without whistleblowers, we would never have known about the revelations in last years “Panama Papers” of politicians and big companies avoiding tax through offshore tax havens, or the state of patient care in some of our hospitals. [3] These people put their jobs on the line to tell us things we should know - but under these plans it’s a lot more than just their jobs that could be at risk.
Human rights groups and senior lawyers have already spoken out against these plans, but it would be easy for the government to dismiss them as the usual suspects. [4] They won’t be able to ignore a huge outcry by hundreds of thousands of us who know we have a right to hear what’s going on behind closed doors.
Let’s force the government to scrap these plans before they’re even properly on the table. Sign the petition now asking the government to reject the idea to imprison whistleblowers or journalists who report on the leaks for up to 14 years.
Use the button below to add your name to the petition today:
By Anthony J. Pickles, University of Cambridge and Joel Robbins, University of Cambridge Ever since the inauguration of Donald Trump, events of jarring magnitude have come tumbling one after another at breakneck pace: 20 executive orders in ten days, the border wall, the “Muslim ban”, rows over voter fraud and crowd sizes, “alternative facts”, intrigue over conflicts of interest, a controversial invitation to the UK, a gag order on government agencies, a contentious Supreme Court nominee, and more. It feels almost like political life has sped up beyond people’s ability to keep pace. In the US and all over the world, democratic citizens are exhausted. As Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, told MSNBC: “It’s as if history is being collapsed into a black hole and everything is happening faster than the speed of light.” This feeling of draining temporal acceleration isn’t confined to politics. In fact, it’s the tempo of our age. We know the life-shortening effects of jet lag, stress, and occupational burnout in societies increasingly replete with technologies to monitor our time use and performance. We know the trials of conditioning our children to sleep through the night and stay awake during the day so that they experience time in discrete blocks. Making sense of time, in short, can be exhausting. Anthropologically speaking, we also know that people can perceive time in different ways. For some, time is epochal, a series of discrete states unconnected with one another; others see it as millennial, on the verge of catastrophic collapse or renewal. Still others see it as cyclical, bound to forever repeat itself. Some people’s belief in eternal paradise is so powerful that it dominates their relationship with the present, meaning they understand climate change or even nuclear war as relatively minor episodes in a larger story. But for others, the same phenomena portend that we are living on the edge of decline and potential catastrophe. At destabilising political moments, these perceptions can change. The fall of the Soviet Union was one such moment. Living in a state of fear and desperation, many on the eastern side of the iron curtain had kept up an absolute pretence that the Soviet Union was forever striving forward while their world crumbled slowly. But as the moment broke, time seemed to speed up, marked by daily leaps in inflation. A few canny men took control of those resources and emerged as oligarchs. (Trump’s refusal to divest his business empire opens the door to similar opportunities.) A remarkable version of this is happening today. Trump and his aides propagate their venomous nonsense at such speed that they accelerate the news cycle to dizzying pace, too fast for the toxicity to be countered. The force of executive power means the consequences of Trump’s actions are spread so widely and chaotically that one can barely grasp the implications before the next monstrosity hits. But this is not just a side-effect; it’s a brutally effective political strategy. Do or die Historians and anthropologists have both argued that the crisis is the defining political concept of our time. Framing a problem as a crisis compresses all its complexity and contingency into a single moment of truth, one that calls out for quick, decisive action that often oversteps usually-respected boundaries. Perhaps only an age of perpetual crisis could within eight years produce first the US’s first African-American president, with his sparkling oratory of audacious hope, and then a pathological narcissist running on a platform of “you will be tired of winning”. Even Trump’s evangelical Christian supporters consider our times so pressing that all the president’s moral failings, however utterly incompatible with their beliefs, must be forgotten.
Trump’s winning move was to pitch crisis against historical complacency. One of the reasons he was able to defeat Hillary Clinton was that she failed to shake off her association with the bad old days of business as usual – a stagnant era that saw the already wealthy steadily enrich themselves further. Only by engaging with accelerating disaster on its own terms, he argued, can we survive. This is a rocky road to fascism, and there needs to be an effective political counter-strategy. Those protesting or resisting Trump must refuse the crisis-peddlers’ diktat to live at a frighteningly fast pace, and instead get back to thinking in terms of the middle distance. Crisis is being used to force people into a do-or-die mentality; if they refuse to think that way, they can retain the distance they need to identify shared goals and the ways to achieve them. They need to make their own time. Those rallying against Trump need to undercut his projected strength by gumming up the works of the economy and the state, thereby proving that his power to solve problems has its limits and refusing to let him outrun our attention spans. The best metaphor, and the best activity, is marching, with its steady rhythm and undeniable presence. This must be combined with more and more of the sort of innovative and news-capturing protests that have already begun. They must be packed with people ready to capture and control the political narrative that emerges, and to break the exhausting cycle of perpetual near-disaster. The politics of crisis and excessive speed are winning, and they are harmful. Slowing things down to a healthy, manageable pace is the way to fight back. About Today's Contributors: Anthony J. Pickles, British Academy Research Fellow, University of Cambridge and Joel Robbins, Sigrid Rausing Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
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