A Lil News

I've noticed the annual Memphis summer killing spree has gotten off to an early start. Wondering when the residents within the black community will begin to take back their communities? I guess most folk wondering where to start. I like what those residents in a Raleigh apartment complex did to a suspected burglar. They whupped his azz.

Memphis is not the only city dealing with violent crimes. "The number of violent crimes in the United States rose for a second straight year in 2006, marking the first sustained increase in homicides, robberies and other serious offenses since the early 1990s, according to an FBI report to be released Monday." To read more, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/01/AR2007060102360.html?hpid=topnews

Check your toothpaste, if it was made in China...dump it. The toothpaste has been found to contain a poison used in some antifreeze. Get this, the FDA warns the toothpaste "has a low but meaningful risk of toxicity and injury to children and people with kidney or liver disease." WTF? Talking bout finding a reason not to brush. Here are the brands...Cooldent Fluoride, Cooldent Spearmint, Cooldent ICE, Dr. Cool, Superdent, Clean Rite, Oralmax Extreme, Oral Bright, Bright Max, and ShiR Fresh Mint. Read the article...http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/02/us/02toothpaste.html?hp

It was just a month or so ago that it was discovered that pet food made in China was killing pets. All over the U.S. family pets were dying and folk were clueless as to the cause. Yep...China. But you can't point the finger only at China. We have an agency responsible for such product safety. It's called the Food and Drug Administration.

Long story short is, the FDA is understaffed and underfunded. For 2008, the USDA has a proposed budget of 20 Billion dollars while the FDA has a proposed budget of 1.6 billion. But the FDA is responsible for overseeing 80% of the food items sold in the United States. And peep this...the FDA inspects roughly 1% of all food imports...like that ish from China. Go figure. If we cant rely on the FDA, then who can we rely on to inspect the stuff we call food? Anyway, I think you know where I am going...but I refuse to make any references to the war in this blog...promise. For more on this visit, http://www.fdacoalition.org/

The Supreme Court recently dealt a blow to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by stripping it of much of its potency. The majority opinion, by Bush Alito, forced an unreasonable reading on the law, and tossed aside longstanding precedents to rule in favor of an Alabama employer that had underpaid a female employee for years. "The ruling is the latest indication that a court that once proudly stood up for the disadvantaged is increasingly protective of the powerful", according to the NY Times.

In short, a female supervisor of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in Gadsden, Ala., sued her employer for paying her less than its male supervisors. At first, her salary was in line with the men's, but she got smaller raises, which created a significant pay gap. Late in her career, she filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A jury found that Goodyear violated her rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Goodyear appealed arguing that she filed her complaint too late and, by a 5-4 margin, the Wack Supreme Court agreed. Title VII requires employees to file within 180 days of "the alleged unlawful practice." The court calculated the deadline from the day she received her last discriminatory raise. Bizarrely, the majority insisted it did not matter that Goodyear was still paying her far less than her male counterparts when she filed her complaint.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, clearly disgusted with her male counterparts Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy and Uncle Thomas, read her dissent aloud in open court. The second time this year she has chosen to share her disgust with the majority. A NY Times editorial opined that in addition to interpreting the statute unreasonably and ignoring the relevant precedents, the majority blinded itself to the realities of the workplace. Employees generally do not know enough about what their co-workers earn, or how pay decisions are made, to file a complaint precisely when discrimination occurs. At Goodyear, as at many companies, salaries were confidential. The court's new rules will make it extraordinarily difficult for victims of pay discrimination to sue under Title VII. That is not how Congress intended the law to be enforced, merely how five justices would like it to be. I couldn't agree more.

In her dissent Justice Ginsburg pimpslaps the majorities logic by writing, "In a last-ditch argument, the Court asserts that this dissent would allow a plaintiff to sue on a single decision made 20 years ago "even if the employee had full knowledge of all the circumstances relating to the ... decision at the time it was made." It suffices to point out that the defenses just noted would make such a suit foolhardy. No sensible judge would tolerate such inexcusable neglect. See Morgan, 536 U. S., at 121 ("In such cases, the federal courts have the discretionary power ... to locate a just result in light of the circumstances peculiar to the case."

You go girl!!! Strong words on her part. To read all of her dissent, here ya go. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=05-1074&friend=washingtonpost#dissent1 As wack as the ruling was, Congress can amend the law to undo the ruling, hopefully they will act so that women are continued to be protected by this important law.

No time to edit...I'm out.