alyaza

alyaza OP Mod , 1 month ago

Massachusetts has collected about $1.8 billion from a voter-approved surtax on the state's highest earners through the first nine months of the fiscal year, the Department of Revenue said Monday in a quarterly report.

That's more than $800 million more than what the Legislature and Gov. Maura Healey planned to spend in surtax revenue for all of fiscal year 2024, raising the possibility of a sizable pot that will land in an Education and Transportation Reserve Fund and the Education and Transportation Innovation and Capital Fund, both surtax-specific accounts, once the books close.

alyaza OP Mod , 1 month ago

ALAMOSA — Over decades starting in 1985, the Colorado Mushroom Farm northeast of Alamosa sold millions of pounds of mushrooms grown and harvested within the building’s dimmed cavern to grocery stores in Colorado. Along the way it offered year-round employment to generations of immigrant workers, many of whom came here from Guatemala fleeing civil war and searching for a better economic future.

But when the farm filed for bankruptcy in December 2022, it owed thousands of dollars in unpaid wages to employees, some of whom had been subjected to unsafe working conditions and were injured on the job.

[...]Now, some of those workers are taking charge of their futures with the help of a powerful coalition of nonprofit and government supporters as well as Minsun Ji at the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center, which works to dismantle economic systems that benefit a small few at the expense of many, especially working-class communities and communities of color.

It’s an American Dream in the making, but not without funding for an employee-owned mushroom co-op and the workers learning to navigate the hurdles of business ownership in a system that favors wealthy white entrepreneurs.

alyaza OP Mod , 1 month ago

always fun after the wolf reintroduction vote from a few years back. here's why they're doing this:

Colorado is considered a prime habitat for wolverines, which are listed as a threatened species across the Lower 48 states by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Wolverines were nearly eliminated from much of the United States in the 1930s, experts said, but conservation efforts have helped the animal to make a bit of a comeback. In Colorado, the last confirmed sighting of a wolverine was in 2009, when one traveled down from the Grand Tetons.

Advocates for reintroduction said Colorado is home to the largest block of wolverine-ready habitat in the Lower 48, with about one-fifth of total suitable land. Wolverines are solitary animals that favor high-alpine environments.

alyaza OP Mod , 2 months ago

if it can happen in the South, it can happen in your workplace too! you should start a union--and if you need help to that end, reach out to the AFL-CIO or, if you would prefer a more radical alternative, EWOC

alyaza Mod , 2 months ago

this is not news and it’s not US news; don’t make a post like this in this section

alyaza OP Mod , 3 months ago

this was vetoed last year after it only passed 7-5 (majority to override a veto is 9); but this year it seems almost certain to pass. it has 9 votes this time and it seems even one of the four members in opposition might waver if it’s actually vetoed.

alyaza OP Mod , 4 months ago

the opinion here is just a little bit theocratic

https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/2ddc4a3d-978c-4562-bb6f-eb0fd39463fb.webphttps://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/c7409105-8b3b-4c17-baea-b91159abd1e6.webp

alyaza OP Mod , 4 months ago

i wonder if the best way to think about self-help as a genre is as a sort of placebo genre, where the act of engaging with the genre is a more useful act toward whatever you want to do than actually reading any particular book.