n2doc
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Heisman Winner caught shoplifting from store, internet goes wild
Florida State’s Heisman Trophy winner Jameis Winston has been suspended from the school’s baseball team after being cited Tuesday for shoplifting $32 worth of merchandise from a Publix in Tallahassee, FSU coach Mike Martin announced Wednesday afternoon. Read the full story here. When first reported, the merchandise that was allegedly stolen were reportedly crab legs. The Internet responded with crab leg-themed memes.
more
http://www.ajc.com/news/sports/predictably-internet-reacted-jameis-winston-story-/nfmNg/?icmp=ajc_internallink_textlink_homepage
GOP senator has world's lamest excuse for blocking minimum-wage hike
When it comes to the minimum wage, I’ve accepted that all that the politicians in Washington are going to do for now is play politics with it. But does that mean they have to be stupid about it too?
And I’m talking about you, Mike Enzi, Republican senator from Wyoming.
…
But then up stepped Enzi, who took us on a little trip down memory lane — and then fell on his face.
Enzi said the minimum-wage jobs he worked as young man — window washer and “stock boy” — helped prepare him for owning his own business: “These are jobs where we learn to be dependable, to work with other employees and to learn that work ethic.”
Yes, Mike, work is good. Jobs are good. Hear! Hear! It’s not Churchill, but keep going …
“Today’s workers often don’t know how to interrupt their texting to wait on a customer.”
more
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-minimum-wage-gop-senator-mike-enzi-20140430,0,2941978.story#axzz30OzWnLwn
Voter ID Is the Real Fraud
For the first time since the Supreme Court junked a core provision of the Voting Rights Act in June, a federal court has used the strongest surviving part of the act to strike down a state’s voter-identification law, and, in the process, has set out a detailed road map for upcoming challenges to similar laws around the country.
Supporters of these laws insist they are necessary to prevent fraud at the polls, though such fraud is basically nonexistent. The real point is to deter from the polls significant numbers of Democratic voters, particularly minorities and the poor.
That was the heart of the reasoning by Judge Lynn Adelman of Federal District Court in Milwaukee, who issued an extraordinarily thorough 90-page ruling on Tuesday invalidating Wisconsin’s voter-ID law as a harmful solution in search of an imaginary problem. The law was passed by a Republican-controlled statehouse in 2011 and required that a prospective voter present a government-issued photo ID, like a driver’s license or passport.
“Virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin, and it is exceedingly unlikely that voter impersonation will become a problem in Wisconsin in the foreseeable future,” the judge wrote.
“A person would have to be insane to commit voter-impersonation fraud,” he added, pointing to high costs of being prosecuted for that crime compared with the low benefits of casting one additional vote.
more
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/30/opinion/voter-id-is-the-real-fraud.html?emc=edit_ty_20140430&nl=opinion&nlid=41565923&_r=0
Republican-Led Filibuster Blocks Minimum Wage Bill in Senate
Source: NYT
WASHINGTON — A proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10, an underpinning of President Obama’s economic agenda and an issue that Democrats hope to leverage against Republicans in the midterm elections, failed in the Senate on Wednesday.
The vote was 54 to 42, with 60 votes needed to advance the measure.
All but one Republican voted to sustain a filibuster against the measure, saying that the increase would damage the fragile economy and force businesses to cut hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Democrats were mostly united behind the bill.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/us/politics/senate-minimum-wage-bill.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=1
Arizona May Impose Unusual New Tax On Customers Who Lease Solar Panels
A new interpretation of state law in Arizona could force customers to pay property taxes on leased solar panels. In a state with an estimated 20,000 solar customers and 85 percent of new solar installations being leased systems, the implications of an extra charge are tremendous. The new tax could result in an additional $152 per year for a residential solar array and even more for larger installations, the Arizona Republic reported. What’s more, the tax would apply to both new and existing customers.
“This is an odd way to try to win over a conservative state — imposing higher or more taxes,” Susan Glick, senior manager for public policy at Sunrun, told ThinkProgress. “Across the country there’s overwhelming support for rooftop solar and notable conservative support for rooftop solar,” she said, and Arizona is no exception.
Major rooftop solar companies like Sunrun and SolarCity are staunchly opposed to the prospect of a property tax, particularly considering “more than nine out of every ten of our systems are leased,” said Will Craven, senior public affairs manager for SolarCity.
Previously, both owned and leased solar arrays were exempt from state property taxes but an Arizona Department of Revenue review last year changed that by determining “leased panels are more like merchant power plants and should pay property taxes like them,” according to the Republic.
So, who would support the effort to charge solar customers more money? Solar advocates in Arizona point to the state’s largest utility, Arizona Public Service Company (APS).
more
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/30/3432172/arizona-solar-property-tax/
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