So... typical NYC... typical NYS in fact... typical government...
As I'm driving home from the airport this morning I pass numerous snow removal crews working...
...working...
(*SNORT*)
Here's the typical scene: Two massive trucks idling. Six guys with shovels. One guy shoveling... kinda... and the others milling around.
Those of you who reside in the NY Metro area are well aware of city employee performance "norms." But for those of you reading this who live in what is dismissively known as "fly over country"... you've never seen anything like it.
And to those of you for whom this is indeed the "normal" snap-shot metro road crew activity... you really should travel the country more - by car.
I'm not trucker... but I love driving around when I'm on vacation. I put a lot of miles on the ol' rental car! And from my experience... road crews WORK once we're talking below the Mason-Dixon line... and once we're talking west of Chicago...
(*SHRUG*)
Just... sayin'...
3 comments:
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/jfk-allowed-passengers-exit-customs-article-1.2507437
Passengers arriving at Kennedy Airport on an international flight were allowed to exit the busy hub without going through Customs — for at least the second time in recent months, the Daily News has learned.
* THE CHIEF OF U.S. CUSTOMS SHOULD IMMEDIATELY BE FIRED.
Bumbling airline and security officials let travelers on American Airlines Flight 1223 from Cancun, Mexico, out of the airport on Monday morning without having their passports or bags checked, sources told The News.
* NO NAMES, HUH? TYPICAL "NEWS REPORTING" IN THE AGE OF OBAMA.
The security lapse mirrored a similar incident involving another American Airlines flight in November.
A 34-year-old man who had been in Cancun to attend three Phish concerts told The News he was able to glide from the plane to the baggage claim area without having to endure the usual maze of Customs and Border Protection security checks.
“It’s absolutely absurd,” the business adviser said. “To think that anyone could be walking off of that plane and just get right into the city. It could be terrorists, El Chapo’s henchmen, anyone.”
The jam band fan said he even approached a Transportation Security Administration agent near the exit, but was told he was free to go.
“I told them what happened and asked them what should I do,” the passenger said. “They said to me ‘That’s fine, you’re OK. Go ahead.’”
* DID HE GET A NAME? DID THE REPORTERS/EDITORS AT THE DAILY NEWS ASK HIM IF HE GOT A NAME?
Several other concert-goers who were on the flight were already outside at the curbside cab line when he exited the airport.
Neither the TSA, which screens passengers before they fly, nor the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, part of the Department of Homeland Security, responded to a request for comment.
It was unclear how many of the passengers from the flight were able to skip the security checkpoints
Hours after the plane landed, American Airline officials pleaded with the Manhattan man — and presumably other passengers — to return to Kennedy and complete the customs process.
“I apologize for any inconvenience this may be for you; however it is a Customs requirement that every passenger entering the United States must clear Customs,” the airline wrote in an email sent to passengers.
* WHY IN GOD'S NAME IS THE AIRLINE INVOLVED IN THIS? THIS IS A CUSTOMS/FEDERAL MATTER!
“You could tell that they knew they screwed up and were desperate to get me to come,” the passenger added.
* "THEY?" SERIOUSLY...?!?!
The oversight sparked fears that terrorists could easily slip into the country without having to pass through any checkpoints.
“New York remains the number one target for terrorists and it just made me think of Paris and how easy it would be for them to get in,” he said. “It’s incompetence like this that could lead to another attack.”
A nearly identical incident involving another American Airlines flight from Cancun unfolded in November, just two days after ISIS released a video threatening New York City with a terrorist attack, The News reported.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/us/lawsuit-claims-disney-colluded-to-replace-us-workers-with-immigrants.html
Even after Leo Perrero was laid off a year ago from his technology job at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. — and spent his final months there training a temporary immigrant from India to do his work — he still hoped to find a new position in the vast entertainment company.
But Mr. Perrero discovered that despite his high performance ratings, he and most of the other 250 tech workers Disney dismissed would not be rehired for at least a year, and probably never.
Now he and Dena Moore, another American laid off by Disney at that time, have filed lawsuits in federal court in Tampa, Fla., against Disney and two global consulting companies, HCL and Cognizant, which brought in foreign workers who replaced them. They claim the companies colluded to break the law by using temporary H-1B visas to bring in immigrant workers, knowing that Americans would be displaced.
* SOUNDS LIKE A PRETTY GOOD PRIMA FACIE CASE JUST FROM THE FIRST PARAGRAPH!
“I don’t have to be angry or cause drama,” said Ms. Moore, 53, who had worked at Disney for 10 years. “But they are just doing things to save a buck, and it’s making Americans poor.”
* IT WOULD BE ONE THING TO DOWNSIZE AMERICAN EMPLOYEES IN ORDER TO "RIGHT-SIZE" - BUT WHAT THEY'VE DONE IS REPLACE AMERICAN EMPLOYEES WITH "IMPORTED" FOREIGNERS.
Ms. Moore had also trained her replacement. After she was laid off, she applied for more than 150 other jobs at Disney. She did not get one.
The lawsuits by Mr. Perrero and Ms. Moore, who each filed a separate but similar complaint on Monday seeking class-action status, represent the first time Americans have gone to federal court to sue both outsourcing companies that imported immigrants and the American company that contracted with those businesses, claiming that they collaborated intentionally to supplant Americans with H-1B workers.
* I SUPPORT THE SUIT. AT THE VERY LEAST... LET'S SEE IF THE ALLEGATIONS ARE ACCURATE. AND IF THEY ARE... THEN I HOPE THE PLANTIFFS WIN!
A furor over the lay-offs in Orlando last January brought to light many other episodes in which American workers, mainly in technology but also in accounting and administration, said they had lost jobs to foreigners on H-1B visas, and had to train replacements as a condition of their severance. The foreign workers, mostly from India, were provided by outsourcing companies, including the two named in the lawsuits, which have dominated the H-1B visa system, packing the application process to win an outsize share of the quota set by Congress of 85,000 visas each year.
The Labor Department opened investigations of the outsourcing companies — the direct employers of the temporary immigrants — at Disney and at Southern California Edison, a utility that laid off hundreds of American workers in 2014. The investigations are continuing. At least 30 former Disney workers also filed complaints with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, claiming that they faced discrimination as American citizens.
The lawsuits by Mr. Perrero and Ms. Moore are based on the rules for H-1B visas, which Congress designed to bring foreign workers with special skills into the country. Employers are required to declare to the Department of Labor that hiring foreigners on the visas “will not adversely affect the working conditions of U.S. workers similarly employed.”
“Was I negatively affected?” Ms. Moore asked. “Yeah, I was. I lost my job.”
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Sara Blackwell, a lawyer in Sarasota, Fla., representing the former Disney employees, said the suits charged that the companies had lied under oath when they said no Americans would lose their jobs.
Disney, in a statement on Monday, said, “These lawsuits are based on an unsustainable legal theory and are a wholesale misrepresentation of the facts.”
* WE SHALL SEE...
The company said more than 100 of the workers who were laid off in Orlando had been rehired.
HCL has said it complies carefully with United States laws. Cognizant, in a statement on Monday, said that it would not comment on the lawsuit, but that it “fully complies with all U.S. regulations regarding H-1B visas.”
The company said an internal compliance team “ensures our practices are not merely compliant with existing laws in letter and spirit, but also adhere to best practices.” Cognizant said it employed “many thousands of U.S. citizens and residents in addition to employees on lawful H-1B visas.”
* RESIDENTS AREN'T CITIZENS. CITIZENS SHOULD COME FIRST.
Responding to the frustration of American workers, Congress in December renewed and increased a fee on outsourcing companies that it had allowed to lapse. Larger companies employing many H-1B workers in the United States will pay an extra fee of $4,000 for each new H-1B visa — up from $2,000 — and another $4,000 to move an H-1B immigrant who is already in the country to a new employer.
Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, a Democrat who has been openly critical of Disney’s layoffs, offered a bill to reduce the H-1B quota by 15,000 visas a year to 70,000. The issue came up in the presidential race, as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican candidate, introduced a bill with Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a Republican hard-liner on immigration, to sharply increase the minimum wage for H-1B workers to $110,000 a year, to discourage outsourcing companies from using the workers to lower wages.
* HMM... INTERESTING... (NOW THAT'S OUT OF THE BOX THINKING!)
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, an international association of tech workers, posted an online petition to encourage Americans who were displaced to file complaints with the Justice Department. In a letter to the group in December, Alberto Ruisanchez, a Justice Department lawyer in charge of prosecuting immigration abuses, confirmed that it would be a violation of anti-discrimination laws for an employer, or a contracting firm, to fire workers or hire replacements “because of citizenship or immigration status.”
* HUH...??? SOUNDS TO ME LIKE THEY'RE SAYING EVEN IF AN EMPLOYER DISCOVERS AN EMPLOYEE IS HERE ILLEGALLY... THAT EMPLOYEE CAN'T BE FIRED.
Mr. Perrero, like many Americans who have lost their jobs, said he was long reluctant to speak out publicly against his former employer. At 42 and with a family to support, he worried that he would not find another job in Orlando, where Disney rules as the largest employer by far. He spoke with The New York Times anonymously in an article in June about the humiliation of training his foreign replacement.
Local recruiters told Perrero that despite the company’s statements, Disney managers said they would avoid rehiring workers who had been laid off. Mr. Perrero said he knew of only two workers from the close-knit group of more than 200 who were dismissed who went back to tech jobs at Disney.
Mr. Perrero said he was “part Italian, part English, part Swedish.” He said, “I wholeheartedly believe our country needs to have amazing people come here to build a long-term foundation.” But he said the H-1B program had been abused.
Ms. Moore said that even with strong programming credentials, it was hard for her to start over in her 50s with another company. She has 13 grandchildren, and she confessed that one of the difficult losses was a pass that allowed her to take them to Disney World at no cost.
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