How do you know even then?
Obama (and Bush-Cheney before him) assert that a president can do whatever he wants (rendition, torture, indefinitely detain, kill) to anyone, and do it with absolutely no oversight, no accountability, in secret.
About Terrorism
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Here's the problem with what you're claiming:
It would mean that I couldn't believe my own eyes and ears when I heard Carl Levin say it on the Senate floor.
It would also mean that the transcript and video of the proceedings on CSpan (Levin speaks at 4:43:38) were also edited.
And then there's the Congressional Record.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Stop believing that if it's on Google, it must be true.
CSpan and the Congressional Record are your friends:
The transcript and video of the proceedings on CSpan (Levin speaks at 4:43:38).
Do your own research before you open your mouth.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
You mean this video on You Tube (or the many identical copies of it)?
Here's the problem with what you're claiming:
It would mean that I couldn't believe my own eyes and ears when I heard Carl Levin say it on the Senate floor.
It would also mean that the transcript and video of the proceedings on CSpan (Levin speaks at 4:43:38) were also edited.
If you'd followed the actual proceedings, you'd know that Obama had threatened to veto this bill, but it was never about substantive objections to the detention powers vested by this bill -- Obama's objections had nothing to do with civil liberties, or due process or the Constitution. It had everything to do with Executive power. Obama's not an opponent of indefinite detention; he’s a vigorous proponent of it, as evidenced by his continuous, multi-faceted embrace of that policy.
His complaint was that Congress had no business tying the hands of the President when deciding who should go into military detention, who should be denied a trial, which agencies should interrogate suspects (the FBI or the CIA). Such decisions, Obama insists, are for the President, not Congress, to make. In other words, his veto threat was not grounded in the premise that indefinite military detention is wrong; it was grounded in the premise that it should be the President who decides who goes into military detention and why, not Congress.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Read this, this and here for the specifics.
SEN. CARL LEVIN, addressing the Senate president: I'm wondering whether the Senator is familiar with the fact that the language which precluded the application of Section 1031 to American citizens was in the bill that we originally approved in the Armed Services Committee and the Administration asked us to remove the language which says that US citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section.
Is the Senator familiar with the fact that it was the Administration that asked us to remove the very language which we had in the bill which passed the committee - and that we removed it at the request of the Administration - that would have said that this determination would not apply to US citizens and lawful residents?
Obama insisted that this provision be in the legislation or he would veto it.
About Terrorism
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I swear that Obamaphiles have lost their minds or are brain-dead; they most certainly don't hold Democratic values.
If I wanted Republican policies and legislation I'd have voted for a Republican. Who thought that when John McCain lost the 2008 election that we'd still be contending with his plans for governing?
If McCain Had Won
McCain would probably have approved a failed troop surge in Afghanistan, engaged in worldwide extrajudicial assassination, destabilized nuclear-armed Pakistan, failed to bring Israel’s BenjaminNetanyahu to the negotiating table, expanded prosecution of whistle-blowers, sought to expand executive branch power, failed to close Guantanamo, failed to act on climate change, pushed both nuclear energy and opened new areas to domestic oil drilling, failed to reform the financial sector enough to prevent another financial catastrophe, supported an extension of the BushTaxCuts for the rich, presided over a growing divide between rich and poor, and failed to lower the jobless rate.
Nothing reveals the true state of American politics today more, however, than the fact that has undertaken all of these actions and, even more significantly, left the DemocraticParty far weaker than it would have been had McCain been elected. Few issues are more important than seeing behind the screen of a myth-making mass media, and understanding what this demonstrates about how power in America really works—and what needs to be done to change it.
If you're so certain that it was veto-proof, then with Obama's action today he can get the Senate to initiate a repeal of the provision and let's see who votes against it, both sides of the aisle.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Because the White House threatened to veto any legislation without the indefinite detention provision.
In the end, Udall voted for the legislation with the provision giving a president the ability to indefinitely detain anyone, American citizens inclusive.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Democratic politicians only put it in because Obama insisted!
If it was veto-proof, it was because Democrats were doing what Obama insisted on.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
What's your point? That you believe that it had to be passed as it was or else the military wouldn't have gotten paid?
I wonder how many here know that Obama insisted on the indefinite detention provision over the objections of the Senate Armed Services Committee recommendation?
About Terrorism
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
No, it wasn't. It was straight out of CSpan. I, like millions of others, watched it as it happened.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I read your comment and this does no better to explain your point. The carrot he dangled was to get Neslon to vote FOR the bill not to buy his support for pro corporate legislation. The npublic option was never even put on the table so he didn't have to worry about anyone voting for it.
===============================
And that's what ACA is -- Pro-corporate legislation. It's a great big piece of pork, a grand giveaway to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and which does nothing to get affordable quality medical treatment to everyone.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I read your comment and this does no better to explain your point. The carrot he dangled was to get Neslon to vote FOR the bill not to buy his support for pro corporate legislation. The npublic option was never even put on the table so he didn't have to worry about anyone voting for it.===============================
I already explained that in that comment which looks as if you only read part of (that comment I wrote, and the difference between carrots and sticks and what parties do to keep their caucuses in line).
Obama never pressured Blue Dogs to support a public option or any pro-populist legislation. He has, however, dangled carrots (bribed) to them to buy their support for pro-corporate/Republican-like legislation.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
What were they talking about?
Your mistake is in believing that it's only Republicans who oppose Obama. As a matter of fact, about 20% of Republicans anticipate voting for Obama.
A great number of Democrats, myself included, have no intention of voting for Obama.
About Terrorism
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
The short version is that the Senate, controlled by Democrats, could initiate legislation to repeal that provision.
If you believe that Republicans are preventing any and all legislation from passing, then you're not paying attention.
Do you believe that any politician, in either party, would vote against it?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Even the one substantive objection the White House expressed to the bill — mandatory military detention for accused American Terrorists captured on U.S. soil — was about Executive power, not due process or core liberties. The proof of that — the definitive, conclusive proof — is that Sen. CarlLevin has several times disclosed that it was the White House which demanded removal of a provision in his original draft that would have exempted US citizens from military detention. In other words, this was an example of the White House demanding greater detention powers in the bill by insisting on the removal of one of its few constraints (the prohibition on military detention for Americans captured on US soil). That’s because the WhiteHouse’s North Star on this bill — as they repeatedly made clear — was Presidential discretion: they were going to veto the bill if it contained any limits on the President’s detention powers, regardless of whether those limits forced him to put people in military prison or barred him from doing so.
Any doubt that this was the WhiteHouse’s only concern with the bill is now dispelled by virtue of the President’s willingness to sign it after certain changes were made in Conference between the House and Senate. Those changes were almost entirely about removing the parts of the bill that constrained his power, and had nothing to do with improving the bill from a civil liberties perspective. Once the sole concern of the White House was addressed — eliminating limits on the President’s power — they were happy to sign the bill even though (rather: because) none of the civil liberties assaults were fixed.
Obama had threatened to veto this bill, but it was never about substantive objections to the detention powers vested by this bill -- He was never objecting to the bill on civil liberties grounds. Obama is not an opponent of indefinite detention; he’s a vigorous proponent of it, as evidenced by his continuous, multi-faceted embrace of that policy.KEEP READING
Obama’s objections to this bill had nothing to do with civil liberties, due process or the Constitution. It had everything to do with Executive power. The WhiteHouse’s complaint was that Congress had no business tying the hands of the President when deciding who should go into military detention, who should be denied a trial, which agencies should interrogate suspects (the FBI or the CIA). Such decisions, insisted the White House, are for the President, not Congress, to make. In other words, his veto threat was not grounded in the premise that indefinite military detention is wrong; it was grounded in the premise that it should be the President who decides who goes into military detention and why, not Congress.
The 4 myths about the detention provision in the NDAA:
3 of them are here.
The 4th (that Obama didn't want Americans included in the detention provision) is here.
SEN. CARL LEVIN: I'm wondering whether the Senator [McCain] is familiar with the fact that the language which precluded the application of Section 1031 to American citizens was in the bill that we originally approved in the Armed Services Committee and the Administration asked us to remove the language which says that US citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section.
Is the Senator familiar with the fact that it was the Administration that asked us to remove the very language which we had in the bill which passed the committee - and that we removed it at the request of the Administration - that would have said that this determination would not apply to US citizens and lawful residents?
Obama actually write it. He insisted that this provision be in the legislation.
About Terrorism
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
It's a matter of standing. The way that this legislation works (secretly), there's no way anybody would know nor have standing to challenge it.
Look at Gitmo, and Baghram, and the secret sites where detainees are still unable to get a day in court.
About Terrorism
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
There's are two books that I read about 30 years ago by Raoul Hilberg that I think probably prepared me more for this period in our history than anything else I've ever read or studied. They help explain how government leaders manage to get citizens to accept that which the citizens would never grant permission for, and to do the unspeakable, unthinkable, to fellow human beings.
Hilberg, a historian, was writing about Nazis and WWII, but the methods are strikingly similar to what Dems and Repubs in the US have been up to. Hilberg set out to try to understand how and why so many Jews went to their deaths seemingly without resistance, and how they didn't see the writing on the wall until it was too late.
Edicts curtailing their rights and movement (everything from limiting the amount of money they could have to where they could actually be in public, banning them from being in public squares or shopping at stores, and sending their children to school) didn't happen all at once, but one at a time, and their response each time was, "This has to be the worst that will happen; we can live with this", until they were rounded up and put on trains to death camps. And their neighbors, who had lived among assimilated Jews, as friends and family, did nothing as the net was closing around the Jews.
It's an eye-opener, about how it can happen to any people (and has since), and how so many of the same tactics used by the Nazis are used by modern day politicians.
The only weapon against these tactics working is an informed electorate that see these tactics coming.
The Destruction of the European Jews
&
Perpetrators, Victims and Bystanders by Raoul Hilberg
About Terrorism
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama and the DLC worked their butts off to PREVENT more progressives/liberals from getting elected. Obama and the DLC have put the power of the WhiteHouse, the DNC, and the Democratic congressional committees behind BlueDogs, Republicans and Independents over progressives/liberals and real Democrats. Some, but not all, examples:
BlueDog BlancheLincoln over progressive Democrat Lt. Governor BillHalter.
Republican-turned-Independent ArlenSpecter over progressive Democrat JoeSestak.
Republican-turned-Independent LincolnChaffee over Democrat FrankCaprio (which, in turn, was an effective endorsement of the Republican JohnLoughlin over Democrat DavidCicilline for the congressional seat Democrat PatrickKennedy retired from, and all of the other seats up for grab in RhodeIsland).
Republican-turned-Independent CharlieCrist over liberal Democrat KendrickMeek.
Republicans, with the smallest minority, have managed to thwart Democrats, who've had the greatest majority in decades. You would think that with Republicans controlling the House, Democrats would've turned the tables and thwarted Republicans' continuing legislation like Bush's tax cuts for the rich? Are Democrats just stupld?
Obama never pressured BenNelson (or BlancheLincoln, or any BlueDog). The Democratic leadership could've taken away committee chairs (BlancheLincoln's, too) of members in their caucus that filibustered a PublicOption for healthcare. They didn't.
The DNC could've taken away reelection funds. They didn't.
Reid could've actually forced Republicans and turncoat Democratic senators to filibuster. He didn't (and doesn't).
The ProgressiveCaucus could have kept their pledge about not voting for a bill that didn't include a robust PublicOption. They didn't.
Obama DID unleash the attack dogs to go after HowardDean when Dean said it was a lousy bill. Dean was then forced to get back into line. Obama went after Kucinich, the last remaining holdout on the ProgressiveCaucus, for threatening to vote no on the healthcare bill, and we all know how that ended.
There is nothing that Lieberman (or Nelson or Lincoln) is doing that Obama hasn't ordered. Obama and the DLC-Democrats want Lieberman there, doing what he's doing, which is to take the heat off of Democrats.
And the proof of this is that (since you mention Nelson), when Obama needed Nelson re: StupakAmendment, he 'bought' his support. That's what Obama could've done for Nelson's or Lincoln's vote at any time, on any legislation.
There could be 100 "progressives" in the Senate and 435 in the House, and they and Obama would still find a way to deliver to corporations instead of the People and blame it on Republicans. Because they're DLC, aka Republicans-in-Democrats'-clothing.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
It was Obama who wanted it, and there was no "veto proof majority".
It wouldn't have passed without Democrats signing on to it, and the only reason they signed on to it was because their leader demanded it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
No judge will never know about it.
The secrecy surrounding renditions and imprisonment makes it impossible to even challenge in a court of law, not to mention standing.
Do you realize how many are imprisoned in Guantanamo, Baghram and other US controlled he//-holes, who haven't been charged with anything?
Wake up!
About Terrorism
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
That is absolutely and positively not true.
But it made a nice cover story when the flak hit the fan afterwards. The disinformation campaign after the signing was vintage Axelrod and Plouffe, complete with a spin campaign claiming that a CSpan video of Carl Levin on the floor of the Senate had been dubbed.
I really don't understand my fellow Democratic voters who refuse to open their eyes about Obama and the 'New Democrats'. There's nothing Democratish about them, just old time Republican.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
You do not know what you're talking about.
Obama insisted on it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Don't you wonder what they discussed?
About Terrorism
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
It means nothing.
The secrecy in which this law is cloaked means nobody would even know the person was being detained.
Obama is the one who wanted, no, insisted on this provision in the legislation. He can send it back to Congress to get it repealed. And he should do it now, before November.
About Terrorism
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Repeal it NOW!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Those who have a problem with what Wikileaks is doing should read this book by Eyal Press - Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times
On the Swiss border with Austria in 1938, a police captain refuses to enforce a law barring Jewish refugees from entering his country. In the Balkans half a century later, a Serb from the war-blasted city of Vukovar defies his superiors in order to save the lives of Croats. At the height of the Second Intifada, a member of Israel’s most elite military unit informs his commander he doesn’t want to serve in the occupied territories.
Fifty years after Hannah Arendt examined the dynamics of conformity in her seminal account of the Eichmann trial, Beautiful Souls explores the flipside of the banality of evil, mapping out what impels ordinary people to defy the sway of authority and convention. Through the dramatic stories of unlikely resisters who feel the flicker of conscience when thrust into morally compromising situations, Eyal Press shows that the boldest acts of dissent are often carried out not by radicals seeking to overthrow the system but by true believers who cling with unusual fierceness to their convictions. Drawing on groundbreaking research by moral psychologists and neuroscientists, Beautiful Souls culminates with the story of a financial industry whistleblower who loses her job after refusing to sell a toxic product she rightly suspects is being misleadingly advertised. At a time of economic calamity and political unrest, this deeply reported work of narrative journalism examines the choices and dilemmas we all face when our principles collide with the loyalties we harbor and the duties we are expected to fulfill.
CAPT. NATELY : "What you don't understand is that it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees"
OLD MAN: "You have it backwards - It's better to live on your feet than to die on your knees."
Federal law allows candidates to seek protection if they meet a series of standards, including public prominence as measured by polls and fundraising.
Those who have a problem with what Wikileaks is doing should read this book by Eyal Press - Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times
On the Swiss border with Austria in 1938, a police captain refuses to enforce a law barring Jewish refugees from entering his country. In the Balkans half a century later, a Serb from the war-blasted city of Vukovar defies his superiors in order to save the lives of Croats. At the height of the Second Intifada, a member of Israel’s most elite military unit informs his commander he doesn’t want to serve in the occupied territories.
Fifty years after Hannah Arendt examined the dynamics of conformity in her seminal account of the Eichmann trial, Beautiful Souls explores the flipside of the banality of evil, mapping out what impels ordinary people to defy the sway of authority and convention. Through the dramatic stories of unlikely resisters who feel the flicker of conscience when thrust into morally compromising situations, Eyal Press shows that the boldest acts of dissent are often carried out not by radicals seeking to overthrow the system but by true believers who cling with unusual fierceness to their convictions. Drawing on groundbreaking research by moral psychologists and neuroscientists, Beautiful Souls culminates with the story of a financial industry whistleblower who loses her job after refusing to sell a toxic product she rightly suspects is being misleadingly advertised. At a time of economic calamity and political unrest, this deeply reported work of narrative journalism examines the choices and dilemmas we all face when our principles collide with the loyalties we harbor and the duties we are expected to fulfill.
From Catch 22 -
CAPT. NATELY : "What you don't understand is that it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees"
OLD MAN: "You have it backwards - It's better to live on your feet than to die on your knees."
Whatever happened to all of the Bank of America email that Wikileaks was going to publish many months ago?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Why is the DOJ Assaulting California's Legalized Medical Marijuana Instead of BP?
Or banks?
Or those that tortured?
Or the Bush administration for war crimes?
Or Bush-Cheney and the CIA for lying to Congress?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Marijuana Shrinks Tumors; Government Knew in ‘74
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/22-us-government-repressed-marijuana-tumor-research/
About Marijuana
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
In February, 2000 researchers in Madrid announced they had destroyed incurable brain tumors in rats by injecting them with THC, the active ingredient in cannabis.
The Madrid study marks only the second time that THC has been administered to tumor-bearing animals; the first was a Virginia investigation 26 years ago. In both studies, the THC shrank or destroyed tumors in a majority of the test subjects.
Most Americans don't know anything about the Madrid discovery. Virtually no major U.S. newspapers carried the story, which ran only once on the AP and UPI news wires, on Feb. 29, 2000.
The ominous part is that this isn't the first time scientists have discovered that THC shrinks tumors. In 1974 researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institute of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, found instead that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice - lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia.
The DEA quickly shut down the Virginia study and all further cannabis/tumor research. In 1976 President Gerald Ford put an end to all public cannabis research and granted exclusive research rights to major pharmaceutical companies, who set out - unsuccessfully - to develop synthetic forms of THC that would deliver all the medical benefits without the "high."
Dr. Marcia Angell exposes the research and spending habits of the world’s top pharmaceutical companies here.
The Truth About Drug Companies
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
- Tip Pool Method #3 Employer may require waitstaff to surrender all tips to a general tip pool where a manager counts tips and then disburses them among wait staff and other workers such as bussers, food runners or hosts/hostesses. This arrangement can work well in a small family type setting. If the employer is trustworthy and the servers trust one another this method can work well. Tipped employees are encouraged to work more as a team. This arrangement is not recommended for large restaurants. In this situation, servers lose their say in how much they want to tip out and can lose the incentive to sell high end bottles of wine if they must share the success of the sale/higher tip amount with the entire staff. Often these types of tip pools are more prone to illegal deductions and coworkers may pocket some of their tips instead of surrendering them. Also, its common for resentment to build among staff who consistently sell more than other servers.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
- Tip Pool Method #2 requires wait staff to contribute a portion of tips BASED ON TOTAL FOOD SALES. Ex Server sold $1000 in food and beverage sales and or required to tip out 5 percent of those sales. This method is not ideal. If a customer fails to tip, the waiter still is forced to tip out the busser/food runner on sales, not actual tips received or a percentage which means the server assumes the risk solely, not the support staff.
Ex. A percentage of tips are deducted automatically from Credit Cardsale amounts not actually credit card tip amounts. Although beneficial for the employer, it does not fairly meet the compensation of the servers. Also, it can cause headaches if the server fails to make minimum wage due to a bad tip. Another example. Once I worked at a casino which gave away $500 dinner vouchers to its loyal gamblers. Some of these diners came in with the vouchers, ran up the bill, but then did not tip out on $500. Sometimes these diners left only.$10. I was still required to tip out a 15 % rate. ( Assuming I made $100, I owed the bussers $20 dollars even though I only made $10. I lost $10) The result. These type of diners were avoided like the plague and often received the worst service imaginable. Angry and dissatisfied, they wrote searing, awful reviews on trip advisor. My advice: Don’t put your servers in this position. If someone doesn’t tip properly, at least allow for adjustments and share the risk of business with everyone. The servers should not be the only ones who assume the burden of a bad tipper.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Tip Pooling
A tip pool is an arrangement where you agree to contribute a portion of your tips to support staff such as the bus person, host or bartender. The Pool House traditionally only includes tipped employees who are directly involved with service such as food runners, waiters, waitresses, host, bartenders, and buss persons. Listed below are some of the most common methods for pooling tips. Regardless of what type of pooled house the employer may use, tipped employees must be informed of the tip pool practice before they start working.
- Tip Pool Method #1 This method is to require wait staff to contribute a agreed upon percentage amount portion of their tips based on actual tips received and/or sales.
Ex. Server agrees to a tip out amount of 15% to busser based on actual tips received If a server made $100 in tips, they must at least tip out 15 percent of tips to a bus person. In this scenario, the server can elect to tip out more but they can not fall below the agreed upon amount to be disbursed among the staff. The server also provides the employer with the amount of tips they received after tip out and the amount disbursed. The servers are provided with the daily sales information and know exactly how much food/wine they sold. They retain tips and surrender only the tips required by the tip pool. This is by far the fairest and best tip pool arrangement for both the food server and employer.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
2. Credit Card Tips
- Employers are allowed to charge servers a fee to receive credit card tips by deducting a processing fee. The industry standard is three percent, which means where the policy is practiced, a server may only collect $19.40 out of each $20 in tips. States that prohibit employers from taking this deduction include: Alaska, California, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, & Washington.
- Unlike cash tips which are received on the same day, employers are allowed to postpone disbursing credit card tips until the next scheduled pay period.
Statements issued by the U.S. Dept of Labor from Opinion letters dated March 28th, 1977 and February 26, 1998- FLSA sS 3(m) and FOH3OdO5
“Where tips are charged on a credit card, it is the position of the Wage and Hour Division that the tips due the employee must be paid to the employee not later than the next regular pay day and may not be held by the employer while the employer is waiting to be reimbursed by the credit card company.”
“An employer may deduct an average standard composite amount for tip liquidation, rather than individually calculating the precise charge for each transaction, so long as the total amount collected reasonably reimburses the employer for no more than the total amounts charged by the credit card companies attributable to liquidating credit card tips. Any employer attempt to deduct an average standard composite amount for tip liquidation that exceeds such expenditures is not acceptable.”
Tips: the Basics
1. Service charge vs. tip.
- When a service charge is added to a customers bill, full payment is expected and required from the customer. Tips are strictly voluntary and nonenforceable. Patrons can choose to leave a tip or not, for any amount they choose.
- Any currency/monies recovered or received from a service charge are property of the employer/restaurant and and any monies a server receives from a service charge is recognized as a “commission” rather than a tip and is reported as income.
- Any tip provided by the customer and intended for the server is considered the property of the server and any monies a server receives from a customer is defined as a tip or a gratuity.
So basically, an automatic service charge belongs to your employer and they can choose how much they want to share with the server. They may even choose not to share anything. (if this is the case, they must pay the full applicable minimum wage, not a subminimum wage)
A tip however, even if wait staff is required to participate in a tip pool is still considered the property of the server. Some in the industry believe an automatic service charge would help eliminate financial risk for servers. This however, would only be true if servers are guaranteed a certain percentage or commission, otherwise employers might not disburse any of the service charge to wait staff.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
WAGE DEDUCTIONS:
The following ways a employer can legally deduct or reduce a server's cash wage or tips include:
- requiring servers to contribute to a tip pool
- deducting a percentage from a server’s credit card tips to cover the cost of credit card processing fee.
- Taking a tip credit.
- Taxes- such as FICA, payroll.
Any other deductions must be approved by a server first
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Tip Credit History
1966 The Tip Credit is created. In 1966, the Tip credit was 50%. In 1980, the tip credit is reduced to its lowest rate at 40 percent. Today, in 2010, the tip credit slightly exceeds 70%- the highest in its history. If the tip credit returned to 50 percent, then the federal subminimum wage for waitresses and waiters would be $3.63 today instead of $2.13 per hr.
When the U.S Dept of Labor states “If an employee’s tips combined with the employers direct wages do not equal the minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference”, it only applies to the work week, not just the day you failed to make minimum wage.
(Federal min wage )$7.25 x 7 = $50.75. (daily) or $7.25 x 30 hrs = $217.50 (weekly) In Santa Fe, for example if you worked 30 hours, you must have earned at least $295.50 for the week combining tips and wage. $2.13 +$7.73 (tip credit) = $9.85. If not, the employer must reimburse you.
Overtime on subminimum wages is determined by multiplying the employee’s regular rate of pay by 1.5 and then by subtracting the hourly tip credit. The employee’s regular rate of pay can never be less than the full applicable minimum wage rate. Example $7.25 (Fed min wage rate or applicable min wage rate) x 1.5 minus $5.12 (Tip Credit) = overtime hourly rate for servers who receive sub minimum wages.
Vacation pay is considered a “Benefit” and not covered or enforced by Federal/state wage and hour laws. You can file a discrimination case, however, if your employer elects to only provide vacation pay to employees of a certain ethnic background or gender who perform the same job.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
The Tip Credit (70% today)
A TIP CREDIT is the total amount of tips an employer may count towards the total applicable minimum wage. The federal tip credit is $5.12. per hr. A employer is allowed to pay servers $2.13 because they are claiming servers will make at least $5.12 an hour in tips.THIS IS WHY THEY ARE NOT REQUIRED TO PAY YOU THE FULL MINIMUM WAGE . $2.13 + tips received (Tip credit) must = the full applicable minimum wage.
*Other states and cities have higher or lower tip credits. In Santa Fe, NM, for Example, where the full minimum wage is$9.85 employers take a higher tip credit. They are still allowed to pay servers $2.13 per hr but those servers must make $7.72 per hr in tips. If they don’t, the employer must reimburse them. Some states such as Virginia and New Jersey, allow employers under certain circumstances to take a full 100% tip credit. This means servers in these states may receive no hourly cash wage at all. States that prohibit the tip credit include: Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.Servers who work in these states receive the same minimum wage as all other workers.
AN EMPLOYER IS NOT ALLOWED TO TAKE THE TIP CREDIT UNDER THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS:
TIP POOLING THAT INCLUDES THE BACK OF THE HOUSE EMPLOYEES
These workers are not directly involved in the chain of service. They do not buss or run food to your tables. According to the FLSA, Employers lose their right to the tip credit if they require wait staff to subsidize the wages of cooks, janitors, dishwashers, managers. If your employer requires you to tip out the back of the house, they MUST PAY you the full applicable minimum wage per hr.
WHEN THERE ARE NO OPPORTUNTIES TO EARN TIPS.
Required attendance for staff meetings, training period or any time you must work but are not receiving tips. For example, if your employer requires you to come in on your day off for a staff meeting or to help set up Christmas decorations, they are required to pay you the full applicable minimum wage. Side work can only account for 20% of your shift. Excessive amount of time performing side work forfeits the employers right to the tip credit.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
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