Call roll at this time. Of the San Francisco Public Utilities commission to order can we please have the roll call commissioner courtney commissioner Vice President moran commissioner courtney commissioner kwon and commissioner caen will arrive shortly. Approval of the draft minutes is there a motion to approve the minutes of the 6 additions, deletions, or changes Public Comment . All in favor, say i. I. Opposed . That motion carries next item, please. Item 4 general Public Comment francisco da costa please. Commissioners, i want to wish you all a happy new year so. Happy new year to you. Thank you so we are now amending the taxpayers theyre going to be seeing a lot changes in 2016 whether we like it are not and what im requesting is not too many people have the time to come here time is precious so we all have our own projects and if you see less and less Public Comment here given it is less and less experts from the community i can mention a few like Steve Lawrence and john and anoth
Corporate profits peaked some quarters ago. Capital expenditures are down. Relative to prior years. New Small Businesses are forming at the lowest rate in many years. They cant find the capital to get organized. For those that do have the capital, theres little reason to make big new investments that demand at home and especially abroad just is not there. For companies depending on exports, the strong dollar and weak growth abroad make them less competitive. For companies and countries that depend on the production, sale, and movement of energy and commodities, they saw the bottom drop out of the prices last year. How much lower will they go this year . Most of our businesses would like Nothing Better than to pay their employees more, hire more of them, and provide better benefits. But the current economy and the current Government Policies are making that very difficult. Just one example. Compliance with obamacare is costing companies a small fortune, and it is significantly driving u
Coming, this is exciting, i know its miserable and disgusting outside. X im reallyw glad you slushed up here. Im so glad you are here. Im sarah, im a labor journalist and do labor pot cast and i have known erik since we were bloggers. Out of sight, the book that we are here to discuss and also has a book coming out, later movement in the logging industry in the specific northwest. Thats coming in october, and he writes with blog, lawyers, skins money. So once upon time, erik recruited me, and hes written this book, which is combined labor and environmental history into a potent argument about the problems that we face now in todays politics and todays world. Thank you so news press. Im going to turn over to a minute to tell you a little bit about the book and i will have a few questions for him and we will take questions for you. Were also on cspan book tv, so smile, say thank you for them to coming and ill turn the floor to erik. Thank you for coming out on a hot, hot day. Im just goi
Node join him. Im just going to give you the general argument about my new book, the long and disturbing story of corporations and catastrophe. I want to start just with a story. So in march of 1911 in a famous incident that many of you know, 146 young female, mostly immigrant workers died at the triangle shirtwaist factory fire in new york. And this event was, this event was precipitated by an industry that was highly exploy tative, the apparel industry. An industry where powerful garment firms, Department Stores in this case, contracted out to subcontractors to make clothing very cheaply. And the conditions in these sweatshops were terrible. There was everything there Sexual Exploitation of workers to very poor paid, safety issues. And the women went on strike in 1909 in whats called the uprising of the 20,000 in order to improve their lives. They lost on Workplace Safety, and two years later the cost of that was clear when 146 of them died. Because it was in downtown new york, famou
Pay a price for its actions in ukraine. That comes as u. S. President obama blames moscow for the crisis. Welcome to countdown. Get to our top story this morning. Our exclusive interview with the german finance minister wolfgang schauble. European central bank has run out of ways to help the eurozone. With bloomberg at the Business Leaders conference. Is sayingrio draghi again and again is what is needed is reform. It is not for the ecb to implement. There is a government. We agreed. Monetary policy can only buy time. Problems asderlying a matter of fiscal policy in this globalized economy. We have the competitiveness. If you look at whats going on , its veryal economy important that we all know in to do this we have again and again to enhance competitiveness. If we are complacent even in continueif we do not to enhance our competitiveness, we will lose. Should the ecb do more to fight inflation . I do not think they have the instruments to fight inflation, to be frank. Interest rates