Page 6 - Florida Sentinel 9-4-15 Edition

President Obama Pushes Climate Change Button With Dramatic Photos Of Changes In Alaska
Columbia Univ. President Made Quite A Stir About President Obama’s Plans
President Obama at a Columbus University Commence- ment Ceremony.
ALASKA ---- President Barack Obama stared down a melting gla- cier in Alaska on Tuesday to sound the alarm on climate change.
From a distance, Exit Glacier ap- pears as a river of white and blue flowing down through the moun- tains toward lower terrain. In fact, it's just the opposite. The 2-mile- long chock of solid ice has been re- treating at a faster and faster pace in recent years — more than 800 feet since 2008, satellite tracking shows.
"This is as good of a signpost of what we're dealing with when it comes to climate change as just about anything," the President said with the iconic glacier at his back.
President Obama trekked up to the glacier in a carefully choreo- graphed excursion aimed at calling attention to the ways he says human activity is degrading cherished natu- ral wonders. The visit to Kenai Fjords National Park, home to the famed Exit Glacier, formed the apex of the President’s three-day tour of Alaska, his most concerted cam- paign yet on climate change.
Exit Glacier has been receding for decades at an alarming rate of 43 feet a year, according to the National Park Service, which has been moni- toring its retreat for decades using photography and, more recently, by satellite.
Glaciers ebb and flow due to nor- mal fluctuations in the climate, and even without human activity, Exit Glacier would be retreating. But the pace of its retreat has been sped up thanks to heat-trapping greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, said Deborah Kurtz of the Park Service.
President Obama stands in front of Exit Glacier.
Pres. Obama takes a closer look at the Exit Glacier.
Columbia University Presi- dent Lee Bollinger caused a stir Monday by reportedly an- nouncing that President Barack Obama will be com- ing to the New York-based campus in 2017.
The Columbia Daily Specta- tor student newspaper re- ported that Bollinger made the announcement at convoca- tion but that he didn’t elabo- rate on what type of role President Obama would have on campus.
The university late on Mon- day clarified that Bollinger was not making a big reveal.
White House deputy press secretary Jen Friedman rolled back the idea that big news was being made, saying in a statement, "The Presi- dent has long talked about his respect for Columbia Univer- sity and his desire to continue working with them. However, at this point no decisions have been finalized about his post- Presidency plans."
The President's trip has been more about vi- suals than words, with the White House putting a particular emphasis on trying to get his mes- sage across to audiences who don't follow the news through traditional means. To that end, President Obama taped an episode of the NBC reality TV show "Running Wild with Bear Grylls," putting his survival skills to the test in the national park.
His itinerary also included the first presiden- tial visit to the Alaska Arctic, which comes amid concerns that the U. S. has ceded influence to Russia in strategic Arctic waters. Melting sea ice has been making way for shipping routes that never existed before, but the U. S. only has two
President’s Labor Board Flexes Its Muscle: Rulings Help Low-Pay Employees
McDonald’s workers protest in Chicago.
President Obama pays surprise visit to Snow City Cafe in Anchorage.
working icebreakers, compared to 40 in Russia's fleet — with another 11 on the way.
President Barack Obama may end up doing more for the struggling labor movement than any president in three decades.
Using a thin partisan ma- jority on the National Labor Relations Board, Pres. Obama’s Democratic ap- pointees have issued a string of rulings that favor unions — including six pro-labor deci- sions in just the past few days.
On Thursday, the NLRB is- sued a momentous 3-2 ruling along party lines that may make it easier for McDonald’s to unionize, reversing a 34- year precedent. The board subsequently issued five addi- tional decisions ruling for unions on less-momentous matters ranging from whether a worker may demand that a union rep be present during a drug test (yes) to whether an employer may exclude union reps from voluntary peer re- view committees (no). Two of these new rulings were made public Monday, concluding a flurry of NLRB votes from a board that observers say is more pro-union than any since the early 1980s.
Such decisions delight or-
ganized labor and infuriate the business lobby.
The NLRB is challenging the federal courts on whether a company may include "mandatory arbitration" clauses in employment con- tracts that sign away employ- ees' rights to sue their bosses. The courts say such clauses are legal; the Obama NLRB has ruled, repeatedly, that they are not, even when work- ers are given the chance to opt out. An NLRB rule that largely eliminated manage- ment litigation prior to a union organizing vote — dubbed by business oppo- nents the "ambush election rule" — has, since its April im- plementation, shortened by 40 percent the time it takes to hold a union election, ac- cording to The Wall Street Journal.
Shorter election periods are believed more advanta- geous to union organizing.
More targets lie ahead, in- cluding another case on the so-called joint employer issue plaguing McDonald's and a possible injunction against Wal-Mart concerning store closures in California.
President’s Navy Chief Tells GOP Candidates To Get Their Facts Straight
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus wants to torpedo all the talk about a shrinking U.S. battle fleet.
Republican presidential can- didates are pushing a “narra- tive,” Mabus said, that President Barack Obama has weakened the military and, in particular, the Navy, at a time of growing demands on Ameri- can power around the world. But in an interview with POLITICO, Mabus fired a salvo at critics he said he don’t know what they’re talking about.
“I have this funny thing about facts,” he laughed in his office on the Pentagon’s E-Ring, “I like to get facts into the equa- tion.”
Numbers aren’t the only way
to measure
seapower,
Mabus said -
a point Pres.
Obama fa-
mously made
to Mitt Rom-
ney in the
2012 presi-
dential debate. But even a sim- ple count of the number of ships in service today — and, Mabus stressed, under contract — re- veals that the Navy is growing, not shrinking.
The Navy has ordered some 70 ships since Mabus came to Washington in 2009, which, ac- counting for retirements of ships in the coming years, puts the fleet on track to grow to more than 300 and, if Congress cooperates, potentially far be-
yond that.
If all goes as hoped, the Navy
will stabilize at a fleet of 308, Mabus said: “That’s the num- ber of ships we need to do every mission we’ve got.”
That’s not enough for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, New Jer- sey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and other Republican con- tenders for the White House. They’ve called for expanding the fleet, either generally field- ing more aircraft carrier strike groups or specifically deploying a fleet of 346 ships or more.
In doing so, the Republicans have also seized on a talking point crafted by the Navy itself in 2008 — that its fleet today is the smallest it’s been since World War I.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus
White House News
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