Hasta La Gadget!

Life is soft. If we want our robots to become more lifelike, or if we want to start using them for more biological applications, they too have to be soft and flexible. That includes robots designed to move around in fluids, robots designed to augment organs in the human body, prosthetics, and, uh, this.

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The Nintendo Switch seems to be off to a strong start in Japan, selling a half million units in its first weeks of availability. This, notably, means that the Switch is selling faster in Japan than the PS4 did during its own launch. Obviously, it’s too early to call, but with the PlayStation 4 being the best-selling home console this … Continue reading

A few years ago, no one had ever heard of XPO Logistics. But today, after borrowing billions of dollars to buy up and attempt to integrate freight and drayage companies, warehouses and other pieces of the global supply chain, XPO is acclaimed as one of the largest transportation companies in the world. And its CEO, Bradley Jacobs, is lauded by some as an industry titan.

But there is a monumental speed bump on Jacobs’ limousine ride to the top of the logistics industry: the haunting specter that Jacobs’ workers across globe are beginning to organize and fight back—together! In the U.S., workers at XPO are eager to build a union with the Teamsters. The company’s response is to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in an ongoing effort to deny these workers their federally protected right to organize.

Workers are standing up against this greedy, global giant around the world.

In 2015, XPO bought Con-way Freight for $3 billion. XPO’s revenue has grown to more than $15 billion, but rather than investing in the workforce to provide stability, the 19,000 employees of Con-way Freight face inadequate health insurance that costs them more and more each year, no retirement security, and no voice on the job.

Warehouse workers at XPO in the U.S. are poorly paid: workers in North Haven, Conn. package and distribute parts for military helicopters to governments all over the world, yet are paid about $12 an hour. They cannot support their families without government assistance. To fight back, North Haven workers recently voted to become Teamsters.

XPO’s port drayage drivers are misclassified as independent contractors forced to pay for their own truck, insurance, parking, maintenance and fuel. Some drivers end up with checks for zero dollars at the end of the week. This has led to government investigations and multiple wage theft lawsuits that have the potential to cost the company tens of millions in stolen wages. XPO managers retaliated against port drivers, along with other unfair labor practices, resulting in drivers making the courageous decision to go on strike five times at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in California.

Meanwhile, XPO’s board of directors recently rubber-stamped a plan that could enrich Jacobs with more than $100 million worth of stock per year—an industry leading giveaway even as Jacobs’ salary was raised 481 percent over the last couple of years. This, and the way XPO treats its workforce, neatly illustrates the reason for growing income inequality in the U.S.

When Jacobs attacks the Teamsters, it is an attack on all workers who are united in this fight.

Jacobs, facing increasing discontent from his workers, has repeatedly attacked the Teamsters, most recently at an industry conference where he said that the union was “out of control.” Jacobs has tried to drive a wedge between the Teamsters and European unions with whom he claims XPO has “cordial, respectful, courteous” relations.

That assertion flies in the face of XPO’s recent labor strife in Europe. In France, an estimated 40 percent of the XPO supply chain workforce affiliated with the union CFDT went on strike in April 2016 at 20 of the company’s 75 locations in the country. Workers struck after XPO broke its promise to not lay off workers for at least 18 months after it purchased Norbert Dentressangle.

In Spain, a XPO worker went on a 10-day hunger strike to denounce his misclassified status as an independent contractor, which denies him the right to join a union. And there is a long-standing, ongoing controversy over the working conditions of thousands of warehouse workers XPO manages for its client ASOS at a large facility in the United Kingdom.

Jacobs’ business record is to flip companies like real estate speculators flip houses. He buys companies, builds revenue through acquisition, slashes the workforce, cuts benefits, and sells the final entity for a huge profit. There is no thought of the interests and futures of workers and their families.

The truth is, the Teamsters are out of Jacobs’ control. Workers are standing up against this greedy, global giant around the world. When Jacobs attacks the Teamsters, it is an attack on all workers who are united in this fight. Our overseas allies, the International Transport Workers Federation, stands with the Teamsters in this battle against global greed. Fifteen unions representing XPO workers in nine countries have declared their willingness to take on XPO. We are one union family and will not be torn apart.

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The push to implement a “Medicare for all”-type system in New York state just took a significant step forward Wednesday. Sen. Jeffrey Klein, who heads the Independent Democratic Caucus in the state Senate, plans to co-sponsor the measure, and will bring along the remaining holdout in the caucus, his spokeswoman Candice Giove told The Huffington Post.

That gives the measure the unanimous support of the IDC, a crucial, and often recalcitrant, bloc of lawmakers. “All members of the independent caucus will become cosponsors of that bill,” Giove said.

The New York Senate is a strange place. With 63 seats, 32 senators are needed for a majority. Republicans have only 31, but an additional Democrat, Sen. Simcha Felder, caucuses with Republicans, giving them control of the chamber. Meanwhile, the eight members of the IDC do not caucus with the rest of the Democrats.

Sen. Michael Gianaris, the deputy leader of the state Senate’s mainstream Democratic conference, welcomed the IDC’s support, even as he lamented that their collaboration with Republicans helped prevent the bill’s passage.

“It’s nice that they are putting their names on the bill, but their partners in government are the ones with the power to prevent it from seeing the light of day,” Gianaris said.

Although Republicans have the majority without the IDC, thanks to Felder, Gianaris believes the breakaway caucus has made the problem worse.

“With the Democrats being divided in the Senate, we lose the ability to pressure Felder to come back or grow the conference in other ways, because we’re too busy dealing with each other,” Gianaris said.

But the support of the IDC is a critical development in the push for single-payer health care, as the state assembly is expected to easily pass its version of the bill in April or May, said one of the bill’s lead backers, Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who represents the northwest Bronx.

The New York Assembly, the state’s lower legislative chamber, passed the same measure in 2015 and 2016, but it wasn’t considered in the state Senate, which Republicans control with the support of the Independent Democratic Caucus.

Despite being within striking distance of passing the single-payer bill in the New York Senate, victory for its proponents seems unlikely given GOP opposition. Rallies are planned in support of single-payer health care in New York City Saturday and Albany, the state capital, Tuesday.

It is not clear why IDC members chose this time to get behind legislation introduced by Sen. Gustavo Rivera, a member of the mainstream Senate Democratic caucus ― particularly since Republican control of the chamber forecloses the bill’s passage.  

There are signs that the IDC is feeling pressure from a progressive Democratic base newly energized by Trump’s election. Over 100 protesters booed Sen. Jose Peralta for his IDC membership outside a February town hall in Queens. Anti-IDC activists have even formed their own group, “No IDC NY,” to oppose the renegade Democrats. 

“The IDC has been feeling enormous pressure since the inauguration from voters in their districts who were shocked to find out the Democrats they elected have been propping up Trump Republicans in the state Senate,” Bill Lipton, the Working Families Party’s New York director, said in a statement. “Now they’re backing legislation that their own support of Republican leadership ensures will never even make it to the floor. That’s the height of cynicism and just more evidence of the heat they are feeling from the resistance.”

Whatever the outcome in New York, the failure of President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with an alternate plan that would increase the number of uninsured Americans by 24 million has given a boost to progressives seeking to go beyond Obamacare.

Legislators in California have launched a new push to implement a single-payer program in the most populous state in the nation, although Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown has expressed misgivings about its cost.

The Affordable Care Act contains a provision that would allow states to make sweeping changes to their health care markets, including instituting a single-payer program that would replace the current private system, so long as the state programs cover as many people with equivalent benefits at no additional cost to the federal government. Vermont worked for several years after the Affordable Care Act’s passage to design a single-payer program, but abandoned the effort over its expense. 

In the wake of Trump being elected, the issue of health care has moved to the top of the agenda for a lot of people.
New York Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz

In New York state, Democrats hold 22 seats in the Senate and will soon hold 23 once a special election is held in a Democratic district. One of those Democrats, however, remains a holdout. Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr. is ardently against abortions, and objects to a single-payer system, telling his colleagues, it would mean that taxpayer money could be used to fund abortion services.

The good news for single-payer backers is that Diaz is running for city council in New York. If he wins, he’ll likely be be replaced by a lawmaker who will back the single-payer bill. (That puts health care advocates in the awkward position of silently rooting for a foe to win a city council race.)

But even with all Democrats on board, they would remain one vote short, meaning Democrats need to either pick up a seat before 2018, persuade a Republican or win the chamber outright in 2018. This being New York, a Republican senator was coincidentally indicted just last week, so it’s always possible a new seat could become available.

If not, said Dinowitz, his hope is that the newfound energy among grassroots Democrats can translate into some Senate seat pickups in 2018. “We need to add one more person. I believe the only way to get to 32 is through the election process,” Dinowitz said. “There is a lot of energy now in my area and other areas. Meetings are attracting huge numbers of people, and a lot of people are coming out, most of whom have never been involved in this way. If it’s sustained it could really change the dynamics of the elections come 2018.”

Controlling the chamber is also crucial because the party in power controls the floor schedule. Even if Democrats persuaded a Republican to sign on, they’d need to similarly persuade the Republican leadership to allow a vote.

Dinowitz said that groups affiliated with Indivisible, a grassroots activism network that arose after the election, have been particularly active on the single-payer issue, and that in meetings with new activists, the number one issue they care about is health care, followed closely by immigration.

“In the wake of Trump being elected, the issue of health care has moved to the top of the agenda for a lot of people. If people think we can rest on our laurels because repeal of Obamacare collapsed, they’re mistaken. Obamacare was a compromise of a compromise,” Dinowitz said, noting that not only was it not the single-payer system many prefer, but the public option was traded away.

If both California and New York can implement a single-payer heath care system in the next few years, he added, something like a fifth of the country will be covered just by those two states.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

When Bryce Maine was thinking about who to take to his senior prom, he had no doubt who the lucky person should be.

“My grandma’s always been an important part of my life, like, my only woman figure in my life, so I was thinking, ‘Why not take her?’ he told WTVM TV.

Maine, a high school senior in Eufaula, Alabama, said Catherine Maine, the woman he calls “Nanny,” never had the chance to go the prom so he wanted to make that happen for her, according to Atlanta news station WAGA. He even put together the perfect promposal.

“I went to Walmart and I got a little canvas and started doing my handprints around it in paint and I just put ‘PROM,’” he told WTVM.

Nanny said yes to the invite and even bought a new dress for the April 8 occasion. However, their plans of a wonderful night together were brought to a screeching halt when Eufaula High School Principal Steve Hawkins told Maine he couldn’t bring Nanny.

Maine said he asked the principal his reasoning for the decision.

“I said, ‘Give me one reason why,” Maine said in the video above. “And he said, ‘Alcohol. In case, she was trying to distribute it to minors.’”

The principal’s decision so angered Maine’s cousin, Sarah Catherine, that she blasted him in a scathing Facebook post.

She also claimed school board officials told them they were afraid allowing Nanny to be Maine’s date would set a precedent that could inspire “future students” to “do it as a joke and make the school a mockery!”

She asked people to post their outrage on social media using the hashtags #letnannygotoprom and #letnanniegotoprom.

The Eufaula City Schools Board of Education responded to the prom scandal by releasing a statement from Hawkins:

Safety of students and staff is the first and most important of the many tasks of a school administrator. For the 10 years I have been high school principal, we have denied requests each year from students asking to bring older dates to prom.  We do not chance leaving any stone unturned when it comes to safety. Most high schools have an age limit for prom attendees.

Maine and Nanny might not be going to prom, but the two still plan to dress up and have a nice dinner and evening out on the town.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.