Toledo
Lawmakers in Ohio are taking a stand against the sexualization of children by introducing new legislation that would ban drag shows and other sexually-suggestive or explicit performances from using minors.
Introduced by Republican state Rep. Tim Schaffer, House Bill 180 amends Ohio’s child endangerment statute to include involving minors in any material or performance that “suggests a minor is participating or engaging in sexual activity, masturbation, or bestiality.” Adults violating the law could face fines starting at $1,000 and six months in prison.
“Given our heightened focus on human trafficking and the role money plays in trafficking children, I knew I had to take action to make sure this activity does not occur again. We can do better to protect innocent children and we must do better,” Schaffer declared in a statement.
Cleveland.com reported that HB180 is motivated in part by a drag event last December at JD Hendersons, a Lancaster-area bar where 9-year-old drag performer Jacob Measley, a.k.a. “Miss Mae Hem” danced in a suggestive costume while accepting dollar bills from an audience (ostensibly for a charitable event).
On January 30, Lancaster Republican Mayor David Scheffler issued a statementdownplaying the incident by stressing that the “minor was fully clothed and was not touched by anyone in the audience,” that his parents were in attendance, that police found “no violations of city ordinances or state laws” and received “no new complaints of this activity” at the bar, and that the bar owners supposedly “did not approve” the activity and promptly banned the drag troupe upon learning about it.
In fact, Scheffler reserved most of his ire for the anonymous person who first publicized the incident by posting on Facebook a video to the “City of Lancaster” page. “I can only surmise that the ‘City of Lancaster’ Facebook poster hid behind the anonymity of the page because he/she knew that the scenario posted was a fabrication,” he complained. “There was no call to my office, LPD or JD Hendersons (I checked) to inquire as to the facts.”
In response, Republican state Senate candidate Melissa Ackison blasted Scheffler for “refus(ing) to condemn the performance,” and called for his resignation.
Jerri Measley told WTOL that she and her husband support their son’s participation in drag as an expression of his love of art, gymnastics, and dance. “What I am unwilling to do is compromise and not support the things my son wants to do,” she said. An August profile of Jacob in the Toledo Blade says the boy became interested in drag performances after watching RuPaul’s Drag Race with his mother. “Ninety-five percent of our friends are in the LGBTQ community and are drag queens,” his mother added.
Jerri says she’s outraged that her son’s performance is being cited as an example of child endangerment and insists he isn’t being sexualized. “I have altered everything so it is all past the knee,” she claimed. In fact, the Lancaster bar video shows the child in a much higher skirt exposing his thighs, and RuPaul’s Drag Race contains “frequent graphic sexual references,” according to the Internet Movie Database.
Further, the world of drag is infamous for its heavy sexual content, as are the stories of other child drag stars such as Nemis Quinn Mélançon Golden (a.k.a. “Lactatia”) and Desmond Napoles (a.k.a. “Desmond is Amazing”). Another trend, Drag Queen Storytimes directed at children in public libraries, have been described by performers themselves as intended to give children “unabashedly queer role models” and facilitate “the grooming of the next generation.”
HB180 has been referred to Ohio’s House Commerce and Labor Committee for further consideration.
Source: InfoWars
FILE PHOTO: Santiago Abascal, leader and presidential candidate of Spain’s far-right party VOX, speaks at a rally in Toledo, Spain, April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Sergio Perez/File Photo
April 25, 2019
By Ingrid Melander and Joan Faus
TOLEDO/BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) – Proudly displaying two Spanish flags he brought to wave at a Vox rally, retired police officer Jose Antonio Corrales Sierra says he will vote for the far-right party in Sunday’s election and is ditching the mainstream PP conservatives because of Catalonia.
The northeastern region’s independence drive has been an agent of radical change. It was instrumental in triggering the election, has been a pivotal issue throughout campaigning and is expected to be crucial in determining the composition of the next government.
“I used to vote PP, but I will never do it again because they are traitors,” said 61-year-old Corrales Sierra, blaming the party, in office in 2017 when Catalonia defied national authorities to hold an independence referendum, for not doing enough to prevent that banned vote.
The pensioner’s words struck as irrevocable a tone as his actions, but reflected the unbridled emotions in play in the wider debate over national identity that has polarized the country like no other and whose consequences the right wing parties may have misjudged.
“Traitor” is, after all, what PP leader Pablo Casado labeled Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, simply for his willingness to enter discussions with Catalonia’s separatists. Sanchez has consistently opposed any move towards independence.
Vox chief Santiago Abascal called him “insane” and told the rally in Toledo attended by Corrales Sierra that Spain’s survival as a nation was at stake.
Center-right Ciudadanos’ leader Albert Rivera, meanwhile, said Sanchez wanted to “liquidate” the country.
Things are much calmer on the ground in Catalonia than in October 2017 when the crisis upended Spanish politics, helping Vox rise from near-anonymity to the certainty of becoming the first far-right party to sit in parliament in almost 40 years.
CATALONIA OR BUST?
But for it and the other right-wing parties, pushing the Catalonia issue so hard throughout campaigning for an election that remains too close to call may prove counterproductive.
Banking early on the attention it could win them, Vox became co-accuser in the ongoing Supreme Court trial of twelve Catalan separatist leaders for rebellion and sedition.
PP and Ciudadanos joined the anti-secession bandwagon too.
But by all choosing Catalonia and attacks on Sanchez as a major campaign theme, when polls show it is not the top concern for voters, the three right-wing parties risk losing time and energy battling each other and damaging their chances of entering government.
What they are targeting is forming a coalition together, but that outcome, which opinion polls showed to be the most likely one a few weeks ago, has become much more of an outside bet.
Sanchez’s Socialists are now in pole position and, for Lluis Orriols, a political science lecturer at the University Carlos III of Madrid, much of that is down to the right’s stance on Catalonia.
“The three parties saw opportunities on their right flank … but they have neglected the center, which the Socialists are now occupying by default,” Orriols said.
WHAT COALITION?
The election is however far from in the bag for Sanchez, and there again Catalonia is likely to be a determining factor.
Sanchez hopes to be able to govern with just anti-austerity Podemos, the only national party that supports the principle of a referendum on Catalonia’s future.
But surveys suggest other allies will be needed and Catalonia’s separatists are an option.
They precipitated the end of his minority government in February, refusing to back his 2019 budget bill because they felt he was not supportive enough of their demand to hold another referendum.
But in the past week the two main Catalan secessionist parties, ERC and JxCat, have softened their stance, showing some willingness to help support a second term for Sanchez and stave off a right-wing government that would include hardline nationalists Vox.
“We will not facilitate, either by action or by omission, an extreme right government in Spain,” ERC leader Oriol Junqueras said from the Madrid jail where he is being held during his sedition trial.
“If we want the (Catalan) republic, the referendum, it is obvious that we have to be understood in the world.”
Catalonia elects 48 of Spain’s 350 deputies, and ERC and JxCat could together have up to 23 seats, a CIS opinion poll showed.
With the margins so fine, that suggests Junqueras’ support could be decisive, though any talks between Sanchez and the secessionists are bound to be long and complex.
Based on opinion polls, the Socialists and Ciudadanos could together form a two-party coalition.
But chances of that appear to have receded as the election has drawn closer. Not only do they differ strongly on Catalonia but after Rivera repeatedly rejected any such alliance, Sanchez said on Tuesday it was not part of his plans either.
Meanwhile, in Ciutat Meridiana, the poorest neighborhood of Barcelona, the debate about independence seems far from people’s minds.
“What I care about is having a job. I am apolitical,” said 41 year-old construction worker Francisco Javier. He said the campaign should focus on bigger concerns such as global warming and plans to leave his ballot paper blank.
(Additional reporting by Sabela Ojea, Elena Rodriguez; Writing by Ingrid Melander; editing by John Stonestreet)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Peru’s former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is seen at a court, after his arrest as part of an investigation into money laundering, in Lima, Peru April 16, 2019. Picture taken April 16, 2019. REUTERS/Guadalupe Pardo
April 19, 2019
LIMA (Reuters) – A Peruvian judge on Friday ordered former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to spend up to three years in jail while prosecutors prepare corruption charges against him for allegedly taking bribes from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.
The decision comes just two days after another former Peruvian president, Alan Garcia, committed suicide to avoid arrest in connection with Odebrecht, a Brazilian firm that has laid waste to Peru’s established political class as it has implicated officials and political leaders in alleged bribery schemes.
Kuczynski, an 80-year-old former Wall Street banker who once held U.S. citizenship, denies wrongdoing. Kuczynski did not attend the hearing before Judge Jorge Chavez on Friday because he was receiving treatment for heart problems in a local clinic.
After Garcia killed himself on Wednesday, Kuczynski’s attorney asked prosecutor Jose Domingo Perez to consider putting Kuczynski under house arrest instead of pre-trial detention as planned. But Perez said Kuczynski’s health problems could be treated without problem in jail, and Judge Chavez approved his request to hold Kuczynski in jail for 36 months before trial.
The ruling came as Garcia was being buried and will likely further fuel criticism that the Odebrecht probe has become too aggressive and that prosecutors and judges were abusing the use of so-called “preventive prison,” or pre-trial detention.
Under Peruvian law, criminal suspects can be held in jail before trial for up to three years if prosecutors show evidence that they would likely be convicted and would probably try to flee or obstruct the investigation unless detained.
Peru’s four most recent presidents and the leader of the opposition have been ordered to pre-trial detention in connection with Odebrecht since the company admitted in late 2016 that it paid some $30 million in bribes to Peruvian politicians, part of a sophisticated bribery system its former executives detailed to authorities abroad.
Prosecutors in the Odebrecht probe say they need preventive prison to keep wealthy and powerful suspects from evading justice as they gather evidence in the country’s biggest graft investigation. But critics, including the chief justice of Peru’s Constitutional Tribunal, Ernesto Blume, say it is being used excessively in response to anger at widespread corruption.
Kuczynski, who was president a little over a year ago, has said he has cooperated fully with investigators, even declining to file an appeal when they barred him from leaving the country shortly after resigning in March of 2018.
As president, Kuczynski initially denied having any link to Odebrecht. But he eventually acknowledged his consulting company advised Odebrecht on financing for projects that it had won while he was a cabinet minister in the government of former President Alejandro Toledo.
Toledo is fighting extradition from the United States after a judge ordered him jailed before a trial over allegations he took a $20 million bribe Odebrecht.
Another former president, Ollanta Humala, spent nine months in pre-trial detention in connection with Odebrecht before he was released on appeal.
(Reporting By Mitra Taj)
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Apr 11, 2019; Baltimore, MD, USA; Oakland Athletics designated hitter Khris Davis (2) looks on in the ninth inning against the Baltimore Orioles at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Mandatory Credit: Evan Habeeb-USA TODAY Sports
April 19, 2019
Oakland Athletics slugger Khris Davis signed a contract extension Thursday that covers the 2020 and ’21 seasons for a reported total of $33.5 million. Davis was scheduled to become a free agent in November.
Davis’ 143 home runs since the start of the start of the 2016 season are the most in baseball over that span — 19 more than second-place Giancarlo Stanton.
Davis, acquired from the Milwaukee Brewers in a 2016 trade, has a league-leading 10 home runs in 77 at-bats this season. Home runs have become the 31-year-old’s niche, as Davis has produced three consecutive 40-plus homer seasons since joining the A’s.
–The Detroit Tigers placed left fielder Christin Stewart on the 10-day injured list due to a strained quadriceps muscle.
Stewart, 25, sustained the injury Tuesday while running the bases in the ninth inning of the Tigers’ 5-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates. An MRI revealed no structural damage, but bruising and soreness limited his mobility.
Stewart is batting .222 with three homers and a team-high 13 RBIs through 16 games. The Tigers recalled infielder/outfielder Brandon Dixon from Triple-A Toledo to fill the vacant roster spot.
–The Chicago White Sox placed starting pitcher Lucas Giolito on the 10-day injured list with a strained left hamstring, the club announced.
Giolito, 24, sustained the injury Wednesday during the third inning of his outing against the Kansas City Royals. He had thrown 2 2/3 scoreless innings with five strikeouts to that point. Giolito is 2-1 with a 5.30 ERA and 23 strikeouts over four starts this season, his third with the White Sox.
The White Sox recalled outfielder Ryan Cordell and right-handed pitcher Carson Fulmer from Triple-A Charlotte. They optioned struggling outfielder Daniel Palka to Charlotte after Wednesday’s game.
–Field Level Media
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Supporters of Peru’s former President Alan Garcia arrive for the wake, after Garcia fatally shot himself on Wednesday, in Lima, Peru April 18, 2019. REUTERS/Guadalupe Pardo
April 18, 2019
By Marco Aquino
LIMA (Reuters) – Thousand of Peruvians said goodbye on Thursday in Lima to ex-president Alan Garcia — who killed himself this week – in the second of three days of national mourning declared by President Martin Vizcarra.
Garcia shot himself in the head on Wednesday to avoid arrest in connection with alleged bribes from Brazilian builder Odebrecht, in the most dramatic turn yet in Latin America’s largest graft scandal.
Friends, allies and leaders across the political spectrum paid homage to Garcia at the headquarters of his APRA party, one of Latin America’s oldest political parties, and one which twice helped usher Garcia to the presidency.
Vizcarra ordered flags to be flown at half mast at the country’s Congress and other public buildings to honor the ex-President and former lawmaker.
Despite that, some of Garcia’s most tenacious allies cried out “Vizcarra is a murderer,” at the wake, a nod to Garcia’s recent critique that his prosecution was politically motivated.
A pugnacious politician considered one of Latin America’s best orators, Garcia had long been dogged by graft allegations that he brushed off as baseless political smears.
But prosecutors investigating Brazilian builder Odebrecht gathered enough evidence to secure a judicial order this week to hold Garcia in pre-trial detention while they prepared charges against him, prompting the ex-president’s suicide.
The investigation in Peru had picked up speed in recent months, with a judge ordering another former president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, to jail before trial in connection with the company last week.
The scandal had already touched the highest levels of Peru’s ruling political class.
Ex-President Alejandro Toledo is fighting extradition from the United States after a Peruvian judge ordered him jailed in 2017, while another former leader, Ollanta Humala, spent nine months in pre-trial detention before he was released last year on appeal.
(Reporting by Marco Aquino, writing by Dave Sherwood; Editing by Alistair Bell)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: 2019 Jeep Wranglers move to the Final 1 assembly line at the Chrysler Jeep Assembly plant in Toledo, Ohio, U.S., November 16, 2018. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/File Photo
April 8, 2019
By Nick Carey and Ben Klayman
TOLEDO, Ohio (Reuters) – Lots of workplaces have a hot seat. At the Jeep assembly plant in Toledo, Ohio, there is a “sweet seat.”
In the production line where Jeep Wrangler sport utility vehicles are made at the rate of about one a minute, a panel must be screwed into the bottom of the vehicle. It used to be back-breaking work for two union members to carry the panel and screw it on as the vehicle moved down the line.
Occasionally, they would miss screws.
Now two workers sit comfortably on adjacent chairs that follow the vehicle. Lasers point out where the screws go, reducing errors.
What is remarkable about the so-called “sweet seat” at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV’s Toledo plant is that like many other innovations here, it originated with United Auto Workers union members on the factory floor.
Production workers here create proposals to simplify tasks that are “too heavy or too hard,” said millwright Greg Harman, who is on a team of 10 UAW workers that implements those ideas. A handful of automakers have adopted aspects of a similar system, pioneered by Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp.
The uncommon level of union collaboration with Fiat Chrysler (FCA) management in Toledo offers a road map for union negotiations this summer with Detroit’s Big 3: FCA, General Motors Co and Ford Motor Co.
According to officials at the automakers, their key focus in this year’s contract talks will be on productivity and profitability in the face of an anticipated downturn in vehicle sales and non-unionized competition from the likes of Toyota, Nissan Motor Co Ltd and Volkswagen AG.
That clashes with union demands to maintain healthcare benefits and boost job security, and comes on the heels of GM’s warning that it could shutter a car factory in Lordstown, Ohio, along with three other UAW-represented plants. GM’S move drew harsh criticism from President Donald Trump, and prompted the UAW’s new president to bulk up the strike fund – serving notice the union is not afraid of a fight over jobs.
At a time when national UAW membership fell 8 percent in 2018 after rising for nine consecutive years, and has failed to organize a single U.S. assembly plant owned by a European or Asian automaker, FCA’s Toledo plant has more than tripled its workforce to 5,700 workers since 2009. For a graphic, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2I4S0wa
The biggest reason: Americans’ love with the Wrangler and other high-margin SUVs.
The Wrangler became so hot that FCA started running the plant virtually round the clock. So UAW Local 12, which represents workers at the Toledo plant, pushed for a flexible system under which workers could choose to work between four and seven days per week – a first for any FCA plant.
Temporary workers fill in the gaps, and Local 12 sought more protections for those workers, including providing a clear path to full-time employment status.
“Our members went way, way, way beyond the call of duty to provide what the company’s needs were,” said Mark Epley, the plant’s union chairman. “It’s a competitive market out there and we know that any plant can be taken away at any time.”
Thanks largely to its success at FCA, UAW Local 12 has hit a 40-year high in membership through organizing workers at many other companies in the area, including a Dana Inc plant where workers make Wrangler axles.
SANTA ON THE ASSEMBLY LINE
Success at Toledo took years to build. A decade ago, when the former Chrysler Corp was going through its government-funded bankruptcy, Toledo had a reputation as the automaker’s worst-run plant.
As Italian automaker Fiat S.p.A took control of the Chrysler, then-Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne turned to Fiat executive Mauro Pino with a challenge: which legacy U.S. Chrysler plant should they use as a proving ground for what Fiat called “World Class Manufacturing,” a version of Toyota’s lean production strategy but adapted to the Italian automaker’s culture?
Pino chose Toledo with the idea of turning the worst performing plant into the best. He had two years to prove he could turn the plant around, he told Reuters in an interview outside Cleveland, where he now runs an Eaton Corp aircraft parts plant.
Pino found a workforce of around 1,700 people, demoralized by Chrysler’s bankruptcy. The plant produced just over 140,000 vehicles in 2009.
He began working to win the workers’ trust. He dressed as Santa Claus before Christmas 2010 and handed out candy canes to workers on the line, greeting each by name, workers at the plant recall.
Pino also pushed for more productivity but did so by asking workers how they would redesign their own cumbersome jobs.
“Usually you need to convince people to change, but when they saw what we were doing they started coming to us,” he said.
“The new system gave everyone a voice,” said Cheryl Reash, a 36-year worker at the plant.
Tracy Seymour, also at the plant nearly 36 years, said the team of 10 millwrights – a team started by Pino – came up with a system for parts kits that eliminated the need for vast amounts of inventory on the line. That made it possible for workers to build 10 different engine types without having to bend over, lift heavy objects or walk off the line in search of parts.
“I wouldn’t run without their equipment,” Seymour said. “It would be impossible.”
RUNNING HOT
Over time, workers and managers at Toledo worked to unplug bottlenecks up and down the assembly line.
“Why we succeed and exceed is that union and management came together,” Seymour said.
Soaring customer demand for sport utility vehicles also helped the Toledo plant. As workers cranked out around 500,000 Wrangler and Jeep Cherokee SUVs annually from 2014 to 2016, the plant’s two production lines began running at well over 100 percent capacity, according to data from AutoForecast Solutions. This level of capacity utilization is rare in the industry.
Still, Fiat Chrysler could not keep up with demand in both the United States and in the 105 countries where the Toledo-made Wrangler is sold.
To ease the crunch, the company proposed moving the Cherokee to another factory so Toledo could make more Wranglers. In return, Local 12 was promised another new product. Baumhower said the local accepted the move based on that promise.
The plant is now ramping up production of the Gladiator pickup truck, which shares many parts with the Wrangler and is getting glowing reviews in the automotive media.
But while FCA’s Toledo success shows what can happen when a Detroit automaker and its union work together, it also shows how a strong local can also punch back. In February 2018, for instance, Local 12 publicly protested an FCA plan to replace 88 UAW-represented truck drivers with contractors, forcing the company to back down.
“We’re good at getting along if you want to get along,” said Bruce Baumhower, who has been president of Local 12 for 26 years. “And we can fight all day if you want to pick a fight.”
(Reporting By Nick Carey and Ben Klayman; Editing by Joseph White and Edward Tobin)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A robot prepares to install the windshield to a 2019 Jeep Wrangler at the Chrysler Jeep Assembly plant in Toledo, Ohio, U.S., November 16, 2018. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/File Photo
April 3, 2019
By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Wednesday it was dropping a 2012 proposal to harmonize U.S. vehicle window safety standards with international rules.
Under the Obama administration, the auto safety agency known as NHTSA proposed adopting international rules on glazing materials agreed to by a world forum in 2004.
But NHTSA said it was now withdrawing the proposal because it could not conclude that harmonizing the rules “would increase safety.”
The agency cited crash data that suggests “current glazing materials are performing acceptably.” The rules were previously adopted by the European Union.
The United States already has performance requirements in place for car windows to reduce injuries resulting from impact, ensure transparency for driver visibility, and to minimize the possibility of occupants being thrown through windows in collisions.
NHTSA said safety issues around glazing had been substantially reduced since the 1960s, adding that it still planned to conduct additional glazing research.
In 2012, NHTSA said adopting the international rules would modernize U.S. testing to account for “tempered glass, laminated glass, and glass-plastic glazing used in front and rear windshields and side windows” and would “better reflect real world conditions and eliminate redundant and unnecessary testing.”
The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group that represents major automakers including General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co, Toyota Motor Corp and Volkswagen AG, said in August 2012 it supported NHTSA’s efforts to harmonize regulations.
“Differences, even small ones, in functionally equivalent regulations cause redundancy that adds cost to the product without benefit for the consumer,” the group wrote.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Tom Brown)
Source: OANN
Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati Andrello, in charge of crisis management and sexual abuse cover-up of the Church in Chile, which began during the pontificate of Pope Ratzinger, has finally ended. His resignation as Archbishop of Santiago was officially accepted by Pope Francis on Saturday.
The powerful Cardinal Ezzati who is facing accusations of cover-up of several abusive priests in Chile, has left Santiago and can now retire and spend the rest of his days in a luxury resort paid by the Vatican and not in prison like Cardinal Pell. His resignation is the result of the current crisis of the Church in Chile, where in recent years a growing number of cases of clergy sexual abuse and cover-up has ultimately ruined the reputation of the Catholic Church he was trying to protect.
Cardinal Ezzati, who is an old friend of Pope Francis, is now facing the civil justice system, accused of allegedly covering up sexual abuse by the former Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Santiago, Fr. Oscar Muñoz Toledo. At a press conference following the resignation acceptance, Cardinal Ezzati said that the crisis in the Church in Chile, “Without a doubt has been the greatest sorrow of this time.”
He also tried to justify himself by saying that the archdiocese has fully cooperated with the civil justice system, “we had open doors,” and, “prosecutor had requisitioned the documents he wanted” in the different raids carried out by the Chilean police authorities. This is only partially true, as the police had to carry out various raids.
In the eyes of Pope Francis, Ezzati gained standing to become a Cardinal. He specialized in crisis management by being apostolic visitator of the infamous Legionaries of Christ, an Order with a strong presence in Chile, whose leader, the late Marcial Maciel Degollado (1920-2008), was a pedophile and a Satanist working for the New World Order at the highest levels, including the Bush family. After his death the seal of silence and fear that was weighing on many Legionaries was broken, and the Vatican needed someone like Cardinal Ezzati to control the Legionaries, especially in Chile.
As Archbishop of Santiago, Ezzati inherited the oversight on the case of Father Fernando Karadima accused of the sexual abuse of minors in Chile, which became public in 2010, raising questions about the responsibility and complicity of several Chilean bishops, including some of the country’s highest-ranking Catholic prelates. By 2018, this case attracted worldwide attention as a critical failure of Pope Francis and the Church and pushed the whole Chilean Church to address the sexual abuse of minors in an unprecedented manner. Catholic bishops in Chile even handed the Pope their resignations, something I reported last year on leozagami.com:
http://leozagami.com/2018/06/14/chilean-crisis-of-the-catholic-church-deepens-as-pope-is-exposed/
Cardinal Ezzati ultimately said in his recent press conference: “For now I am availing myself of my right to remain silent which Chilean legislation offers me. I will speak at the appropriate time. My lawyer knows the day and the hour to speak.”
When Ezzati’s resignation was accepted, Pope Francis appointed Bishop Celestino Aós Braco of Copiapó as Apostolic Administrator in Santiago but this resignation seems to have angered the Pope who is onboard a sinking ship.
Leo Zagami is a regular contributor to Infowars and the author of the new groundbreaking book, Confessions of an Illuminati Vol. 6.66 The Age of Cyber Satan, Artificial Intelligence, and Robotics.
Source: InfoWars
General Motors production worker Dina Mays works on the 10-speed transmission assembly at the General Motors (GM) Powertrain Transmission plant in Toledo, Ohio, U.S. March 6, 2019. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook
March 18, 2019
By Nick Carey and Ben Klayman
TOLEDO, Ohio (Reuters) – General Motors Co built the final Chevrolet Cruze small car at its Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant on March 6, despite demands from President Donald Trump, Ohio political leaders and the United Auto Workers union not to close the plant and leave nearly 1,500 workers laid off.
Dina Mays, a 14-year veteran of Lordstown Assembly, was not at the plant for its last day. She had already moved on to her new workplace, GM’s Toledo transmission plant, where the automaker builds ten-speed transmissions for popular pickup trucks.
The U.S. auto industry is heading into a new cycle of plant closings and job cuts. Sales in the world’s second-largest vehicle market are projected to fall. Consumers shifting away from traditional sedans such as the Cruze have left GM with more workers assigned to building cars than the market can support.
But GM has the reverse problem with trucks – for now, it cannot build them fast enough. That is helping GM find new jobs for displaced sedan plant workers, and blunt attacks from the UAW and politicians.
The automaker recently announced it will add 1,000 jobs at a plant in Flint, Michigan, to build a new generation of GM’s largest pickups.
A GM spokeswoman said last week that 538 workers from a Detroit plant slated to close in 2020 and nearly 100 from Lordstown have already signed on in Flint to fill those jobs.
That and other job opportunities could cushion the blow for most of the 1,450 workers currently laid-off at Lordstown. The Ohio plant is one of five North American GM plants slated to close by January 2020.
GM Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra has said the automaker expects to have 2,700 job openings by early 2020 at other thriving plants, enough to absorb nearly all of those displaced in plants in Maryland, Ohio and Michigan willing or able to uproot for work hundreds of miles away. GM said another 1,200 affected hourly workers are eligible for early retirement.
Based on a plant-by-plant count provided by GM, if every worker displaced or soon to be displaced volunteers for or accepts a new job – and those eligible to retire do so – that would potentially leave up to 500 GM workers jobless, far fewer than the thousands decried by the UAW and Trump.
Ohio is a key state for Trump’s 2020 re-election chances. In July 2017 he vowed in Youngstown, Ohio, near GM’s Lordstown plant, that those auto jobs were “all coming back.”
“Don’t move,” he told residents. “Don’t sell your house.”
NOMADIC LIFESTYLE
But Mays and other veteran GM factory workers have been pushed into nomadic lives before. Mays is on her third GM factory in 15 years. In 2005, she moved to Lordstown in northeastern Ohio after being laid off at a GM plant in Baltimore, Maryland.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it, it’s rough,” Mays said.
Her eldest son is at college and a 12-year-old son remains with relatives near Lordstown. “But I have to be able to support myself and my kids.”
After 25 years with GM, she has five years until retirement, so transferring “was the best decision I could make.”
For those who move, GM offers a $30,000 cash package to offset costs. If the company has jobs for laid-off workers elsewhere and they refuse them, they lose their supplemental pay and are eligible to hire on again only at their “home plant” – in this case, Lordstown.
SCANT OPTIONS
For Joe Stanton, 55, transferring 160 miles (258 km) to Toledo from Lordstown made sense.
With 25 years at GM, he also has five years to go before he can retire. He rents an apartment with Mays just outside Toledo to cut costs. He moved from Pittsburgh to Lordstown in 2006 when his GM plant there closed. He owns two homes, one near Lordstown and one in Pennsylvania.
Stanton misses his adult son in Pittsburgh and girlfriend near Lordstown, but said he is lucky not to have small children or sick parents to care for so he could move to Toledo.
If the UAW renegotiates a new product for Lordstown, retooling the plant would take years, Stanton said.
“That’s a gamble I wasn’t willing to take,” he said.
For those left behind, the outlook is bleak.
Tod Porter, chair of Youngstown State University’s economics department, estimated Lordstown’s closure could cost more than 8,000 jobs including at auto suppliers and service providers, in an area still affected by steel mill closures decades ago.
Dave Green, president of UAW Local 1112, which represents workers at Lordstown, said he is fighting for the plant to reopen, but added unemployed GM workers have scant options.
“If you don’t want a job flipping burgers for minimum wage, you got to get the hell out of here,” he said.
(Reporting by Nick Carey and Ben Klayman in Toledo, Ohio; Editing by Joe White and Matthew Lewis)
Source: OANN
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