Amid all the talk of "coincidences" relating Tim Tebow to the Bible verse that he has worn as eyeblack, John 3:16 (he threw for 316 yards vs the Steelers, 31.6 yards/completion was the highest in NFL playoff history, Ben Roethlisberger threw the game's lone interception on 3rd and 16), the one number that stands out is the game's TV rating for the final quarter-hour: 31.6.
It was the most watched NFL Wild Card game in almost a quarter-century, drawing 41.9 million viewers. By way of contrast, the record for a NFL Divisional Game is 43.5 million (Jets/Pats last year) and 111 million people watched last year's thrilling Super Bowl game between the Packers and Steelers.
All I know is that CBS executives did not foresee this happening when they ended up re-entering the NFL market in 1998 (after a 4-year hiatus) with the supposedly inferior AFC after losing the NFC to Fox in 1994. But come Saturday night, they sure will be happy they did.
Liberalsand Democrats are having a field day with Mitt Romnhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifey's off-the-cuff remarks yesterday (responding to hecklers at the Iowa State Fair) that included this line: "Corporations are people, my friend."
ROMNEY: We have to make sure that the promises we make — and Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare — are promises we can keep. And there are various ways of doing that. One is, we could raise taxes on people.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Corporations!
ROMNEY: Corporations are people, my friend. We can raise taxes on —
AUDIENCE MEMBER: No, they’re not!
ROMNEY: Of course they are. Everything corporations earn also goes to people.
AUDIENCE: [laughs]
ROMNEY: Where do you think it goes?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: It goes into their pockets!
ROMNEY: Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People’s pockets! Human beings, my friend. So number one, you can raise taxes. That’s not the approach that I would take.
At a top level, Romney is right: corporations have been long treated by courts as independent "people", able to enter into contracts, commit torts, and -- perhaps, most important -- shield their investors from personal liability.
That's consistent with the Citizens United court's finding that corporations are entities that are subject to First Amendment protections: to paraphrase Romney's words, "Corps are people, too."(*)
(* - Robert Clark's seminal treatise, Corporate Law, declares that "One of the law's most economically significant contributions to business life, and one often ignored by lawyers because it generally generates less litigation than many other contributions, has been the creation of the fictional but legallly recognized entities or "persons" that are treated as having some of the attributes of normal persons." Sec. 1.2.3)
But read Romney's words again. He's actually not arguing that corporations are people, the way Dean Clark and the Citizens United court does.
Rather, he's arguing that corporations are made up of people. Every dollar that a corporation earns in profit is eventually paid to a real person, who owes taxes on that profit. And accordingly, Romney argues, corporation taxes should be reduced.
(We will put aside the political wisdom of Romney -- who's being painted as Mr. Corporation in the GOP primary, at least by Tim Pawlenty -- defending lower corporate tax rates.)
But under Romney's vision, corporations are little more than unincorporated associations: partnerships, if you will, who just happen to have stock tickers.
But if corporations are just the collection of people whom comprise them (i.e., stockholders), why should we grant them status as "legal persons"?
And why should the corporate shield on liability (the shield that kept Mr. Romney, and the rest of Bain Capital from suffering ill-effects from the bankruptcy of Ampad) be recognized?
To quote a different Supreme Court (albeit minority) opinion: "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society"
AP would be remiss not to mention that the latest round of the "secret" NFL/NFLPA talks have been taking place in Hull, MA, at the Nantasket Beach Resort, which itselhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giff is a quick jog down Nantasket Ave. to Point Allerton.
The Young Tech Company's Introduction to the NLRA and Confidentiality
By Terry Klein and Matthew T. Henshon
“The National Labor Relations Act? I thought that was for Big Labor. What’s that got to do with my growing tech company?”
Potentially, a lot.
The First Circuit Court of Appeals has helpfully reminded employers in the private sector that the NLRA has a broader reach than they might think. Historically, the NLRA was enacted to protect the rights of employees and employers to engage in collective bargaining. It codifies the rights of employees to organize, establishes the National Labor Relations Board, governs union elections, and forbids certain unfair labor practices by employers and union organizations. Examples of such practices include employer interference in employees’ efforts to organize, an employer’s refusal to bargain with employee representatives (and vice versa), and conduct by unions that amounts to coercing employees to organize or employers to enter into collective bargaining agreements.
But the language of the NLRA is very broad, invoking a different era when many – if not most – employers faced the prospect of a unionized workforce. And that broad language could still apply to a “New Economy” company.
Earlier this week, the court issued a decision that could affect all employers that include confidentiality provisions in employment agreements, whether they are union shops or not. The court found that one such employer had engaged in an unfair labor practice when it terminated an employee for violating one such confidentiality provision. It did so in spite of the fact that the employer’s workforce was not unionized, and in spite of the fact that the employer was terminated for discussing the terms of his employment with one of the employer’s clients, as opposed to one of his coworkers. Employers that include confidentiality provisions in their employment agreements would be well served to review those provisions to ensure that they comply with the NLRA.
NLRB v. Northeastern Land Services Ltd. presented the First Circuit with the question of whether including a confidentiality provision in an employment agreement constituted an unfair labor practice. While a 2009 First Circuit opinion in the same case concentrated on NLRB procedure (and was vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court), the latest decision returns the focus to the substantive interplay between the NLRA and employee confidentiality agreements.
NLS is a temporary employment agency that supplies workers to companies in the natural gas and telecommunications industry. The employee who filed the unfair labor practices charge with the NLRB signed a temporary employment contract stating that he “understands that the terms of this employment, including compensation, are confidential to Employee and the NLS Group. Disclosure of these terms to other parties may constitute grounds for dismissal.” In connection with a dispute with NLS over reimbursable expenses, the employee notified the temp agency’s client that he would be offline until the dispute was resolved. NLS terminated him. He responded by filing a charge with the NLRB. It was undisputed that NLS had not terminated him for discussing the terms of his employment with fellow employees in connection with a union organizing effort, but instead for disclosing terms to a client. The First Circuit is silent as to whether other NLS employees were union members or were seeking to organize collectively.
The court nonetheless concluded that the provision at issue violated Section 8(a)(1) of the NLRA and that by terminating an employee for violating the provision, the employer had engaged in an unfair labor practice. Stating the broader rule, the Court held that a confidentiality provision is unlawful if (1) employees would reasonably construe it to forbid organizing activity, (2) it was promulgated in response to union activity, or (3) the provision has been used to restrict the exercise of organizing rights. Firing an employee for taking issue with the terms of his employment, the court stated, “went to a prime area of concern” under the NLRA.
The First Circuit’s restatement of its 2009 decision should prompt employers to review employment agreements that include confidentiality provisions. While temporary employment agencies will certainly want to subject their agreements to close examination, other employers for which confidentiality provisions are important should also take note.
The court does not, of course, hold all confidentiality provisions to be automatically void. Narrow provisions that prohibit disclosure of “company business and documents”, for example, are most likely lawful. But, as the court decision makes clear, the mere inclusion of a confidentiality provision can violate the NLRA. And terminating an employee for acting contrary to the provision will constitute still another violation. In NLS’s case, the NLRB forced the company to rehire the employee and pay him damages related to his termination.
Technology companies are not fertile grounds for the type of union organizing that the NLRA is intended to protect, to be sure. But in the context of an employment dispute – say, attempting to enforce a non-compete provision against a former employee – an enterprising employee would be sure to use a broad confidentiality provision and a potential NLRA claim as leverage. Whether located in the First Circuit or not, businesses would be wise to make sure their confidentiality provisions are narrowly tailored to fit specific business needs.
After turning the ball over in the third quarter of Saturday night's game, a perhaps frustrated Dwayne Wade of the Heat proceeded to (i) grab Rajon Rondo and (ii) swing his legs under him, while throwing Rondo to the ground. It's Rondo's dislocated elbow that has gotten all the attention (with the video -- rated at least PG-13 -- here.)
Rondo got hurt on the play. Although he came back into the game, it's unclear whether he will be able to play tonight, in an important Game Four, and his one-armed effectiveness is definitely at issue.
Was Wade intended to hurt Rondo? It's clear that he intended to foul the Boston point guard, mostly like to prevent the kind of break-away that occurred later (after Rondo returned) off of a comatose Chris Bosh. (Although as Jeff Van Gundy notes on the telecast "the ball was already out of bounds.")
Moreover, it was not Wade's first foul, nor first overtly-aggressive play of the day, or the series.
In addition, the Heat themselves, doth protest too much after the game. Here's Wade: "We play this game as competitors..You never want to see anyone get hurt, no matter what it is, what kind of injury it is. Kudos for him for coming back." (emphasis added)
Wade yesterday: “It’s a physical game, the game of basketball is a physical game. I’m not a dirty player, it’s physical. Everyone falls to the ground, everyone gets hurt, people get up.”
Here's teammate LeBron James: "You definitehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifly don’t want to see anyone have freak injuries. The competitors that we all are, us against Boston, you definitely don’t want to see nothing like that happen. Injuries aside, you hope the best for him. You hope that it’s not as bad as it looked. You hope it’s not something that affects him long term."
Finally, Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra: “I’m not answering questions about that. I’m done with that. Moving on....It looked like a normal contact foul...[Rondo] just landed on it wrong. Those things happen. There was a lot of contact. Some of the plays were a lot more physical than that, where guys didn’t get hurt. Those are tough plays."
No flagrant foul was called on the play by the officials at the game. However, the NBA rule book permits the League Office to post-facto assess fouls as "Flagrant-1" or "Flagrant-2" fouls after the fact, making its assessment on factors including:
1. The severity of the contact;
2. Whether or not the player was making a legitimate basketball play (e.g., whether a player is making a legitimate effort to block a shot; note, however, that a foul committed during a block attempt can still be considered flagrant if other criteria are present such as recklessness and hard contact to the head);
3. Whether, on a foul committed with a player's arm or hand, the fouling player wound up and/or followed through after making contact;
4. The potential for injury resulting from contact (e.g., a blow to the head and a foul committed while a player is in a vulnerable position);
5. The severity of any injury suffered by the offended player; and
6. The outcome of the contact (e.g., whether it led to an altercation).
In the NHL, the players on the ice would tell an observer whether the foul (or hit, in hockey) was seen as a clean but unfortunate injury, or something more sinishttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifter. In baseball, we'd know the next time Wade came to the plate.
With no fighting, no beanballs, and no true enforcers in a post-Pacers NBA, the retribution -- if required by the Code of the Game -- will be more subtle. Celtics Coach Doc Rivers, perhaps already anticipating a tough-guy response from some of his players (mostly likely Kevin Garnett), tried to defuse the tension: "I don’t know if it was a hard foul...Let’s put it like this: He didn’t intend to hurt Rondo. I don’t honestly believe that 99 percent of cases in our league that the player ever intends to hurt anybody but he did. It just happens."
Notwithstanding Doc, watch what happens when Wade goes to hole tonight.
eyeblack, John 3:16 (he threw for 316 yards vs the Steelers, 31.6 yards/completion was the highest in NFL playoff history, Ben Roethlisberger threw the game's lone interception on 3rd and 16), the one number that stands out is the game's TV rating for the final quarter-hour: 31.6.
