Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
AP’s Today in History for July 16th
Test of the world’s first nuclear weapon; President Richard Nixon’s White House taping system revealed; John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife and her sister die in a plane crash; Apollo 11 lifts off for Moon.
Breakfast Tune Stray Cats – Foggy Moutain Breakdown (Banjo Time)
Something to think about, Breakfast News & Blogs below
Paychecks Lag as Profits Soar, and Prices Erode Wage Gains
Patricia Cohen, NY Times
Corporate profits have rarely swept up a bigger share of the nation’s wealth, and workers have rarely shared a smaller one.
The lopsided split is especially pronounced given how low the official unemployment rate has sunk. Throughout the recession and much of its aftermath, when many Americans were grateful to receive a paycheck instead of a pink slip, jobs and raises were in short supply. Now, complaints of labor shortages are as common as tweets. For the first time in a long while, workers have some leverage to push for more.
Yet many are far from making up all the lost ground. Hourly earnings have moved forward at a crawl, with higher prices giving workers less buying power than they had last summer. Last-minute scheduling, no-poaching and noncompete clauses, and the use of independent contractors are popular tactics that put workers at a disadvantage. Threats to move operations overseas, where labor is cheaper, continue to loom.
And in the background, the nation’s central bankers stand poised to raise interest rates and deliberately rein in growth if wages climb too rapidly. Workers, understandably, are asking whether they are getting a raw deal.
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- Former Obama Officials Are Riding Out The Trump Years By Cashing In
Zach Carter and Paul Blumenthal
Something to think about over coffee prozac
State board to consider changing mountain’s made-up name
WINDSOR, Vt. (AP) — A Vermont state board plans to hear a man’s request to change the name of Mount Ascutney (ah-SKUT’-nee) because it’s a made-up name.
Hartland resident Rob Hutchins says he recently discovered the name Ascutney is made up and the original name of the summit was Kaskadenak, which means “wide mountain” in the Abenaki (a-behn-AHK’-ee) language.
Hutchins tells Vermont Public Radio he always thought the mountain’s name was a Native American name but the current name doesn’t actually have meaning.
Koasek Traditional Band of the Sovereign Abenaki Nation Chief Paul Bunnell worked with Hutchins to help track down the proper spelling and pronunciation of Kaskadenak.
The State of Vermont Board of Libraries has statutory authority to rename mountains and has scheduled a special hearing July 17 to consider the name change.
I always thought it was the Abenaki word for broken leg.
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