Economy, Online Education News & Reviews
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WASHINGTON (AP) — An Arkansas woman who claims Wal-Mart Stores Inc. discriminated against her after she became disabled has successfully appealed her case to the Supreme Court.
The justices said Friday they would rule on a lawsuit by the employee, Pam Huber, which centers on how far employers must go under the Americans with Disabilities Act to accommodate disabled employees.
Specifically, the dispute is over whether Wal-Mart (Charts, Fortune 500), the world’s biggest retailer, was required to provide Huber with an equivalent position after she could no longer perform her job due to disability, or whether the company simply had to allow her to compete for an equivalent job.
Huber’s lawyers argued in court filings that the federal appeals courts have split on the issue and asked the justices to resolve the split.
Huber worked as an order filler in a Wal-Mart distribution center in Clarksville, Ark., earning $13 per hour, when she was hurt in an on-the-job accident.
The company agreed she was disabled and no longer able to perform her current job. Huber applied for a new job as a router, which paid $12.50, but the position was given to another employee Wal-Mart considered more qualified.
Huber was offered a janitorial position that paid $6.20 an hour, her lawyers said in court papers. Huber sued in 2004, arguing that under ADA rules, she only had to be qualified for the equivalent position, not the most qualified, and should have been reassigned to the router job.
Wal-Mart said in court papers that the job went to the most-qualified candidate under a “standardized, legitimate, and non-discriminatory” process that is allowed under ADA rules.
A federal court in Arkansas sided with Huber, but the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in St. Louis, reversed and ruled in favor of Wal-Mart.
The ADA “only requires Wal-Mart to allow Huber to compete for the job, but the statute does not require Wal-Mart to turn away a superior applicant,” the appeals court said.
The case will be argued before the court next year and decided by July. The case is Pam Huber v. Wal-Mart, 07-480. 
The Presidency of George W. Bush, also known as the George W. Bush Administration, began on his inauguration on January 20, 2001 as the 43rd and current President of the United States of America. The oldest son of former United States President George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush was elected president in the 2000 general election. Bush was re-elected in 2004 as president.
Bush’s term is scheduled to end at noon on January 20th, 2009, when the administration of the 44th President, to be elected in November 2008, is to take office.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — It surprised even some environmentalists when a $21 billion tax package, much of it new taxes on oil companies, emerged in the House Democrats’ energy bill. A requirement on utilities to use renewable fuels was expected to be abandoned as well.
They could cause problems in the Senate, prompt a presidential veto and jeopardize a historic push for the first major increase in automobile fuel economy in 32 years, some lawmakers worried.
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pressed ahead with the entire package, taxes and all. “We have to pay for the bill,” she told reporters.
And for the time being, Pelosi’s instincts appeared to have been rewarded.
The House passed the energy legislation by a solid — though not veto-proof — 235-181 margin, sending it to the Senate for likely action soon.
Eat this: the ethanol bill and food prices
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he will try to bring it up Friday. Senate Republicans said they will try to strip out the new oil taxes and a requirement that utilities generate more electricity from windmills, solar panels and other renewable sources.
“I don’t think anybody can predict what will happen in the Senate,” Pelosi conceded after the vote, but added confidently — and with a hint of possible further compromise: “We will have a bill.”
The House-passed legislation would roll back $13.5 billion in tax breaks enjoyed by the five largest U.S. oil companies with the money to be used for tax incentives for development of renewable energy sources like ethanol from grasses and wood chips and biodiesel and for energy efficiency programs and conservation.
It also would impose new efficiency standards for appliances, building construction and require expansion of the use of ethanol sevenfold to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022 with 21 billion gallons coming from cellulosic feedstock such as wood chips and prairie grass.
But the centerpiece of the bill is a requirement to boost automobile fuel economy by 40 percent to an industry average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020, the first such action since 1975, when Congress first enacted the federal auto fuel economy requirements.
Fuel efficiency and the American driver
Pelosi garnered enough support to assure passage in the House by working out a deal with Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., a longtime staunch protector of the auto industry. Dingell more than a year ago warned auto executives the tide had turned on fuel economy and it was inevitable that stricter requirements were in the offing. He got some concessions to help the industry in return for his support of the bill.
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino called the House-passed bill “misguided” and unacceptable, and said President Bush would veto it if the bill is not changed.
“Their proposal would raise taxes and increase energy prices for Americans. That is a misguided approach and if it made it to the president’s desk, he would veto it,” said Perino.
The White House in an earlier statement called the proposed taxes on the oil companies unfairly “punitive” to a single industry and said the requirement for electric utilities nationwide to use renewable fuels such as wind and solar to generate 15 percent of their electricity would be harmful to some regions where there is little wind or solar energy potential, resulting in higher electricity costs.
But Democrats characterized the legislation as “a new direction” in U.S. energy policy away from dependence on fossil fuels.
“We will send our energy dollars to the Midwest, not the Middle East,” declared Pelosi. “The point of this is, are we about the past or are we about the future.”
But Republicans said the actions amount to government mandates that would lead to higher energy prices while doing little to spur production of more domestic oil or natural gas — fuels they say will remain essential for decades to come.
“There’s nothing in here that’s going to lower gas prices in America … nothing that is going to help American families deal with heating costs this winter … nothing to increase production,” complained Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said an energy bill could pass the Senate, but without the “twin millstones of tax hikes and utility bill increases around its neck.”
Reid told reporters he will move quickly to take up the bill. When asked about its prospects, the Nevada lawmaker said, “I don’t know. We’re going to try very hard.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Mortgage application volume rose 22.5 percent during the week ending Nov. 30, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly application survey.
The MBA’s application index climbed to a seasonally adjusted 791.8 points from 646.3 last week. That figure was revised down from a previously reported 652.5 because of an error by one of the larger reporting agencies, the MBA said. Refinance volume jumped 31.9 percent and purchase volume increased 15.2 percent.
The index peaked at 1,856.7 during the week ending May 30, 2003, at the height of the housing boom.
The survey provides a snapshot of mortgage lending activity among mortgage bankers, commercial banks and thrifts. It covers about 50 percent of all residential retail mortgage originations each week.
Fannie Mae could face more losses
The average interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages decreased to 5.82 percent from 6.09 percent a week earlier. The average interest rate for one-year adjustable-rate mortgages increased to 6.28 percent from 6.24 percent the previous week.
NEW YORK (Fortune) — The wireless world is buzzing with talk of openness.
Search giant Google is heading up the Open Handset Alliance, which is developing Android, an open platform for creating applications and services for mobile devices. AT&T, the nation’s largest wireless operator, this week told USA Today its network is already open to any handset designed to work on the GSM wireless standard. A week earlier, Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon and Vodafone, announced plans to open its mobile network to any device that meets its technical standards. And the Federal Communications Commission is about to auction wireless spectrum that requires licensees to be “more open to devices and applications.”
Openness these days is so trendy that Linda Barrabee, a program manager at consultancy Yankee Group, quipped: “Open is the new black.”
But exactly what does it mean to pry ajar the U.S. wireless networks - and what does it mean for consumers? At times, executives from Google, Apple and other insurgents seem to be using “open” as a synonym for “Internet-like.” The Google founders and many others would like the mobile web to operate more like the wired web, in which consumers can readily get any content they want on any ‘Net-connected device. To accomplish that goal, there are, broadly speaking, three different aspects of the wireless world that need to be unlocked (we’ll get to those in a moment). But even if the wireless world goes open, there’s no guarantee that most consumers will see - or want - a different mobile experience.
Verizon (Charts, Fortune 500) executives privately maintain, for example, that even as the company opens its network to new devices and applications, a big swath of customers will continue to go into Verizon Wireless stores and buy their Verizon-approved phones already loaded with Verizon-assigned features. “I would argue that Verizon’s decision to open its network is a vote of confidence in its existing business model,” agrees John Jackson, a vice president for emerging technologies at Boston-based Yankee. “I would not expect any rapid dissolution of the current model.”
That current model is comprised of different areas - distribution, devices and platforms - that are in the process of being unleashed here in the U.S. (For simplicity’s sake, we broke these into three categories; for a more granular look at what’s closed and open in the wireless ecosystem, you might want to check out this blog post by John Puterbaugh, founder of wireless vendor Nellymoser. Puterbaugh delves into six degrees of wireless openness.)
Open devices: In some other parts of the world, such as Asia, wireless phones and service are sold separately. A consumer buys the cool device he or she wants, then goes down the street or across the mall to a kiosk run by a mobile operator to get the device activated. Some consumers have multiple phones — fashion phones for going out to dinner, a smart phones for work — all with a single wireless service subscription. They simply transfer what’s known as a SIM card (a smart card that contains subscriber ID information) from one device to another. Verizon is promising to do something similar to this — up to a point. The company has said it will open its network to devices that meet its minimum testing standards. Depending on what those standards are, consumers might not end up with a whole lot more choice than what they have today. Further complicating matters is Verizon’s use of a wireless standard called CDMA. Phones that were built for the competing GSM standard, such as Apple’s (Charts, Fortune 500) iPhone, can’t simply hop on the Verizon network. (And AT&T told USAToday that the iPhone won’t be part of its open initative; customers still have to sign a two-year contract with AT&T for the Apple’s wireless device.)
Open platforms: Today, according to John Puterbaugh, whose technology helps media companies deliver content on mobile devices, a whopping 90% of the mobile phones worldwide use proprietary operating systems, such as Research In Motion’s (Charts) Blackberry operating system. An open platform such as Android would give third-party applications developers all the tools - the operating system information, interfaces, even access to the device software - needed to write applications that consumers can download and use on mobile phones. Proponents of open platforms believe this kind of environment will unleash the creativity of the ‘Net onto the wireless world, giving consumers many new applications and gizmos to play with on mobile devices.
Open access to content: When most people refer to the wireless operators’ “walled gardens,” they usually are talking about the fact that the phone companies manage the content and applications that customers can access on their wireless devices. Most of the stuff Americans download to their wireless phones, including ringtones and games, are procured from the carriers’ “decks” — a menu of approved applications provided by the carrier. Content companies would like to be able to market their products directly to consumers, without going through the carriers, and open platforms (described above) should help that.
But carriers may still have some degree of control over consumers’ initial experience. A carrier, for example, probably will still program what the “opening screen” looks like when the customer turns on his or her phone. And those “decks” of carrier-promoted content aren’t going away any time soon. Handset makers “and carriers are going to customize it and put their own proprietary garbage on top of the operating system,” says Nellymoser’s Puterbaugh. “I think that’s they are still going to be able to exert a lot of control.”
Sure, an open wireless world will make it easier for some savvy wireless users to customize their welcome screens, and ignore wireless operators’ portals altogether. But it may be some time before the masses take advantage of wide-open wireless - that seems to be what carriers such as Verizon and AT&T (Charts, Fortune 500) are betting on. Technorati Profile
