New Jersey’s Conscientious Employee Protection Act (CEPA) is one of the most far-reaching whistleblower laws in the nation. It was enacted to protect employees from the retaliatory actions of their employers for having disclosed or “blown the whistle” on their employer’s participation in unlawful or harmful activity.  Our New Jersey Supreme Court has made clear the overarching goal of CEPA is to “protect and encourage employees to report illegal or unethical workplace activities and to discourage public and private sector employers from engaging in such conduct.” CEPA effectuates important public policies of overcoming the victimization of employees and protecting those who  [ Read More ]

September 3, 2012 |By Rob Tornoe This is commentary from political blogger and cartoonist Rob Tornoe. As we celebrate Labor Day by grilling burgers and throwing back some beers, consider this: one in four households in New Jersey live one emergency away from falling into poverty.   That’s the finding of the United Way of Northern New Jersey, which released the results of an unprecedented five-year study that tries to shine a giant spotlight on the status of the state’s working poor. According to its ALICE study, an acronym for Asset Limited Income Constrained, and Employed, 1.1 million New Jersey households  [ Read More ]

Flip-Flops: Definitely not suitable for work Are American workers getting prudish? They might be. A new survey shows U.S. adults expressing more outrage at scantily-clad co-workers this year than they did last year. The report, commissioned by temporary staffing firm Adecco and based on interviews with more than 1,000 U.S. adults, found that 72% of Americans believe strapless or backless tops and dresses are “inappropriate for the workplace,” up from 66% (strapless) and 64% (backless) in June of last year. Showing a little skin below the knee by wearing shorts, flip-flops or open-toed shoes is also a bigger no-no this  [ Read More ]

SCOTUS Upholds the PPACA: An Opportunity Missed By: By Peter Arhangelsky Emerald Legal Blog In a 5 to 4 decision the Supreme Court upheld the Federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), known to many as “Obamacare.” Somewhat surprising was the Court’s rationale. Leading up to this decision many experts thought Chief Justice Roberts might uphold the law in an effort to overcome public concern for judicial activism. And when his conservative roots limited his willingness to uphold the law under the Commerce Clause, he turned to the federal government’s backup argument: the tax clause. To be sure, the  [ Read More ]

By: Lloyd Chapman – Small business advocate | The Huffington Post Today, under various federal laws, the term “small business” can define a range of companies, from businesses with less than 50 employees, to publicly traded corporations as large as Lockheed Martin — the federal government’s largest prime contractor. This question of how big a “small business” is, is of critical importance to our national economy. For example, when the House approved the Republican-sponsored “Small Business Tax Cut Act (H.R.9)” last week, legislators neglected to mention that under the bill many hedge funds, investment firms, C-corporations and pass-throughs worth billions  [ Read More ]

Thanks to billionaire’s legal battle, we now know a lot more about how the super-rich work With his long limbs and delicate gait, Lord Mandelson could no doubt manage a quite convincing turn in Thunderbirds. He’d find Jeff Tracy most convivial: a billionaire astronaut with his own Pacific island, and now, it seems, he even has his own camera-shy friend to pull the strings. According to the High Court, Nathaniel Rothschild, scion of the banking dynasty and friend of seemingly everyone in the spheres of finance, business and politics, is indeed “puppet master” to the Baron of Hartlepool and Foy.  [ Read More ]

Source: www.beaconequity.com Trends Research Institute founder Gerald Celente predicts that a war with Iran is scheduled to cover up the next leg down to the financial collapse of the U.S. and political upheaval a collapse engenders. “I’ve been in this business now since 1980, and I’m always marveled at the schemes undreamed of that they come up with,” Celente told GoldSeek Radio host Chris Waltzek. “So, when things should collapse, they often don’t, because they come up with another scheme. So, here’s the scheme undreamed of that I believe is going to be America’s worst nightmare, and that’s war with  [ Read More ]

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo. Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! – fightforthefuture.org/pipa PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.” The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to  [ Read More ]

By John Schoonejongen – APP.com Whenever I hear Gov. Chris Christie talk about that Jersey attitude, I think back to the 1980s when my family and I moved back to the Garden State after 10 years in New York. As we were getting settled in our new home in Bridgeton, a knock came on the back door. A strongly built, older man with thin gray hair and a big smile stood there with a shopping bag filled with lima beans he had just picked from his garden nearby. “Welcome,” he told us. “I thought you might like these.” My mother  [ Read More ]

It isn’t rocket science. Unused sick days by New Jersey’s public employees should have no cash value when those workers retire. As Gov. Chris Christie has often noted, “Sick days are for when you’re sick. And taxpayers and mayors working on tight budgets should not have to pay the cost for accumulated sick time.” The long-term goal of any reform in this regard has to be the elimination of this “phantom” perk, not some Byzantine work-around. The latest wrong-headed approach to this issue comes from Assemblywoman Pamela Lampitt, D-Camden, who introduced legislation last week that would attach an actuarial value  [ Read More ]