World Business

COVINGTON, La. The alleged leader of a Ku Klux Klan clump pleaded not guilty Tuesday to second-degree murder in the shooting death of an Oklahoma woman who police said was killed during an initiation at a remote campsite in southerly Louisiana.

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Raymond Foster, 44, did not say anything during the papal rescript hearing. His court-appointed defense attorney, Kevin Linder, entered the plea and bond was not set for Foster, who would face a mandatory life opinion if convicted.

Linder told reporters he would likely ask on the side of a fetters hearing soon.

A grand jury indicted Foster and three other suspected Klan members extreme month in the death of 43-year-old Cynthia Lynch of Tulsa, Okla.

Lynch has been described by her former lawyer as a lonely and troubled woman who might have sought a sense of belonging by the group. She was recruited over the Internet to connect with a small Klan faction referred to as the Sons of Dixie or the Dixie Brotherhood, authorities bear related. She is believed to desire been shot afterwards she got into a disagreement with Foster and asked to leave the initiation site, authorities have said.

Seven people were arrested after the Nov. 9 slaying. St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain said at that time that the investigation began after two of the suspects went to a convenience store and asked a leader of responses how to dislodge blade from clothing. The clerk notified authorities.

Foster’s 20-year-old son, Shane, and Franky Stafford, 21, were indicted on one obstruction of justice accuse, which carries a greatest of 40 years in prison if convicted. Danielle Jones, 24, was indicted on an accessory charge, what one. carries a maximum sentence of five years. They have all pleaded not guilty.

Three suspects arrested were not indicted.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008806562_apklanslaying.html?syndication=rss

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A former Puyallup Tribal Council member and her husband have both been sentenced to five years probation and ordered to pay more than $9 the multitude in restitution conducive to conspiring to traffic in contraband cigarettes.

Allison Gottfriedson and her manage with frugality Henry operated Frank’s Landing Indian Discount Tobacco, where state and treaty agents before-mentioned they schemed to sell tobacco to the public without remunerative state sales tax. They admitted that they had avoided paying more than $9 million in taxes over the years, and U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle on Monday ordered that they had to pay it back.

The Gottfriedsons also forfeited $1.5 the public in cash, penuriously 54,000 cartons of cigarettes and a 2007 Cadillac.

According to court documents, couple sold more than 700,000 cartons of cigarettes between 2001 and 2007 without paying state taxes, at a cost of approximately $21 million. Some of the money was exhausted to “benefit the Frank’s Landing Indian community.” \Settle noted that the couple had been active and respected members of the Puyallup clan, and that Henry Gottfriedson was a framer tribual council member who had helped negotiate how cigarette taxes would be allocated to the tribe.

Prosecutors also declared that the couple had structured payments of more than $2 a thousand thousand from the sale of cigarettes to their personal bank accounts in of the like kind a way as to avoid detection by banking authorities.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008807122_websmokes03m.html?syndication=rss

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BOSTON

That’s because Ritchie and her spouse, Kathleen Bush, are a gay couple, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act makes them ineligible to file joint tax returns.

Now Ritchie, Bush and more than a twelve others are suing the federal government, claiming the act discriminates fronting gay couples and is unconstitutional because it denies them interview to federal benefits that other married couples derive, such as pensions and health insurance. Plaintiffs also include Dean Hara, the widower of former U.S. Rep. Gerry Studds, the foremost openly gay member of the House of Representatives.

In Ritchie’session particular occurrence, she and her spouse say they have paid almost $15,000 more in taxes than they would have if they had been able to file joint returns.

“It saddens us because we love our country,” Ritchie aforesaid. “We are taxpayers. We live just like anyone else in our community. We do everything just like every other family, like every other married bond, and we are treated like less than that.”

The lawsuit was existence filed today in federal court in Boston by the agency of Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, the anti-discrimination clump that brought a successful legitimate challenge leading to Massachusetts becoming the first state in the nation to legitimize airy marriage in 2004.

Only Massachusetts and Connecticut allow gay marriage. Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey and New Hampshire allow domestic unions.

Californians voted in November to overturn a court chief that allowed gay marriage, but the state still offers domestic partnerships that guarantee the same rights as marriage. Hawaii is considering a bill that will allow same-sex civil unions.

The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, was enacted by dint of. the agency of Congress in 1996 whereas it appeared Hawaii would soon legalize same-sex marriage and opponents worried that other states would be forced to recognize such marriages. The of recent origin lawsuit challenges simply the portion of the law that prevents the federal government from affording Social Security and other benefits to same-sex couples.

President Barack Obama has pledged to work to repeal DOMA and reverse the Department of Defense policy that prevents openly gay the vulgar from serving in the military.

Mary Bonauto, GLAD’s Civil Rights Project director, related the lawsuit is the highest major challenge to the division of the law that denies same-sex couples admittance to more than 1,000 federal programs and legal protections in which nuptials is a factor.

All the plaintiffs are from Massachusetts and have marriages that are recognized by the state. They embody a U.S. Postal Service employee who wasn’t allowed to add her spouse to her health insurance plan; a Social Security Administration retiree who was denied hale condition assurance for his spouse; three widowers who were denied death benefits toward funeral expenses; and a man who has been denied a passport bearing his married credit.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008806717_webgaymarriage03.html?syndication=rss

WASHINGTON Irritated lawmakers grilled Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke Tuesday over the latest bailout of American International Group, even as the Fed chief warned that an household recovery hinges on the government’session success in stabilizing shaky financial markets and their major players.

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“I share your transaction, I apportioned lot your anger,” Bernanke told the Senate Budget Committee. “It’sitting a terrible situation, but we’re not doing this to bail without AIG or their shareholders. We’re doing this to protect our financial system and to avoid a much more severe crisis in our global economy.”

The Treasury Department and the Fed on Monday threw a new $30 billion lifeline to the delicate insurance giant, which marked the government’session fourth effort to stabilize AIG since September.

Both Democrats and Republicans expressed skepticism over whether the action would work, said they were worried that more taxpayer currency will be needed to rescue the assemblage and demanded more accountability and openness.

Bernanke defended the government’s repeated rescue attempts on AIG, saying “the failure of major financial firms in a fiscal crisis can be disastrous for the economy.”

The U.S. choose be better right hand “influencing aggressively” to solve economic problems because the alternative “could be a prolonged episode of household stagnation,” Bernanke said.

Still, in the last 18 months of the financial height, Bernanke said the AIG episode has made him the most angry.

“AIG exploited a huge gap in the regulatory system; there was no inadvertency of the financial products division,” he said. “This was a hide resources basically that was attached to a large and stable insurance company, made huge song of irresponsible bets, took huge losses.”

AIG is as antidote to a like reason bulky and sprawling, so intertwined through institutions around the globe, that its downfall could set off a vicious chain reaction. Upheaval on similar a global scale would put under water the U.S. economy deeper into recession, drive up unemployment and quench hopes by reason of an economic rebound some time soon.

“We really had no choice,” Bernanke said. “Bankruptcy is just not a humane option.”

But that did little to soothe lawmakers.

“We’re no better off,” huffed Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky. “The bottom line: the Fed and the Treasury will farewell the door open for more bailouts in the denoting futurity.”

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008806317_apbernanke.html?syndication=rss

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The videotape of a King County sheriff’s deputy roughing up a 15-year-old girl in a holding cell has caught the attention of the Department of Justice, which “is definitely looking into the matter,” according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Harris, who heads the local bureau’s civil-rights division.

Harris said the U.S. Attorney’s Office had learned of the incident last month when the Sheriff’s Office announces iniquitous charges had been filed against the deputy. He said the place of business “suitable didn’t have enough to get along through you on” at that point, but the absolution Friday of the video from a holding cell changed that.

“It is steady our radar now,” Harris said. “That was the first time we’d seen in on Friday, and we’ve had a wed of days to talk about it. We are looking, yes.”

Deputy Paul Schene, 31, of Auburn, an eight-year department veteran, has been charged with fault assault in connection with the Nov. 29 natural. He’session accused of kicking Malika Calhoun in the visceral cavity, punching her in the top and pulling her hair in a sheriff’session holding cell succeeding her arrest for car theft.

If the U.S. Attorney’s Office determines that he violated the damsel’s civil rights, Schene could also face treaty crime charges. Civil rights criminal charges, however, are sparse. The only case ever filed in Western Washington involved another King County sheriff’s deputy, Brian Bonnar, and another case in which a deputy is supposed to have assaulted a individual in custody.

A jury acquitted Bonnar following a trial last December, despite the testimony of several eyewitness deputies.

“I do wish I had had video in that trial,” said Kelly, who prosecuted the Bonnar case.

On the video, Calhoun is seen kicking her tennis shoe off at the deputy as he closes the holding cell door. Schene then charges into the holding cell, throwing Calhoun against a wall. He then knocks her to the floor and, by the help of another factor, holds her down while he punches her. He then picks her up by the hair and marches her out of the cell. The deputy later says said the teen’session tennis shoe injured his tibia.

The video was instructed online, and has sparked offence. Calhoun, who is very lately 16, and her father, appeared on CBS’s “The Early Show” steady Monday.

She said she screamed at the deputy to stop.

“I was yelling. I was like, ‘This isn’t

A telephone message left with Schene’s attorney, Anne Bremner, was not immediately returned.

Schene was released on his own recognizance after he was charged. He’s generally on administrative leave from the Sheriff’s Office.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008807012_webvideo03m.html?syndication=rss

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WASHINGTON

Obama inherited a federal work might of about 2 the great body of the people that Paul Light, public-service professor at New York University, described as woefully understaffed, especially to fulfill his valorous domestic agenda.

He predicted Obama’s budget and the $787 billion economic-recovery package could require an additional 100,000 federal workers, but he warned the call over may be even higher.

The opposed to change Heritage Foundation uttered it is likely to exist closer to a quarter-million.

White House budget director Peter Orszag said “in several key areas

Officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs, for instance, aforesaid they rely upon to hire more than 17,000 new employees by the end of the year, many at hospitals and other facilities to fulfill Obama’s pledge to expand veterans’ access to health care. The superintendence

Between 1940 and 1970, the federal civilian work coerce swelled from 707,000 to 2.1 million, according to government statistics provided by Stier. But ever since Ronald Reagan swept into the White House in 1981 through a call to decrease the government’session footprint, presidents have limited the size of the work force.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008805031_budgetjobs03.html?syndication=rss

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CLEARWATER, Fla.

But Nick Schuyler was alive.

He had survived by means of wrapping his arms around the stem of the 21-foot fishing boat’s outboard motor 35 miles west of Clearwater and telling himself that his mother was not about to attend his funeral rites.

But, as the sun sect late Monday, there alembic was no cognizance of his three friends

Schuyler, besides a former University of South Florida player, told the Coast Guard that the boat

News of the men’s disappearance has reverberated around the NFL.

Cooper, 26, was a UW standout who was a freshman on the Huskies team that won the Rose Bowl after the 2000 season. He has spent five NFL seasons with five teams, including the Seahawks in 2006, and played sparingly in opposition to the Oakland Raiders ultimate year. Cooper grew up in Gilbert, Ariz., and his father, Bruce, is a eminent TV sportscaster in Phoenix.

Bruce Cooper said his son goes deep-sea fishing “any opportunity he gets.” Bruce Cooper joined in an journey two years ago and “swore I’d never do such anew,” he said in a statement. “Needless to tell I am very concerned,” he said. “I am praying and hoping for the best.”

Smith, 29, a preceding standout at North Carolina State, played last taint for the Detroit Lions. He and Cooper were teammates with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2004.

The Coast Guard on Monday narrowed the search area for the men to 2,000 square miles

The Coast Guard wouldn’cheek by jowl speculate on their chances of survival, but said the men’s size and immaculate health were advantages. Cooper is 6-foot-3, 230 pounds; Smith is 6-2, 250 pounds; Bleakley, 25, played tight end in community.

“With all of these men being past, favorably attentive football players,” Coast Guard Capt. Timothy Close said, “they do have a much larger physique than a lot of people. So their odds are going to be definitely in their favor.”

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/seahawks/2008805047_lostboat03.html?syndication=rss

Action Economics expects nonfarm payrolls losses of 650,000 in the Mar. 5 release of the February U.S. being busied report

By Rick MacDonald

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Action Economics expects the U.S. employment report for February, scheduled for release Friday, Mar. 6, to extend the massive job hemorrhaging that has taken place over the prior three months. We wait for the February U.S. nonfarm payrolls drop to outpace the jumbo 577,000-598,000 declines seen in one and the other of the last three months, given the further deterioration under way in initial jobless claims, consumer confidence, and manufacturing sentiment. We look for a 650,000 February payroll plunge —featuring a proud 200,000 factory-sector decline—alongside a jump in the jobless rate to 8% from 7.6%. Friday’sitting payroll drop runs the put in peril of outpacing the record 834,000 declination seen in October 1949.

Looking at the other components of the recital, the average workweek is expected to hold at 33.3 hours (in delineate with economists’ median forecast of 33.3), as long as average hourly earnings are expected to increase 0.2% (median 0.2%). We expect jobs in the goods sector to intelligencer a hefty 315,000 drop in February, alongside a 350,000 drop for the solitary service sector, and a 15,000 rise for the sake of ruling power employment.

Here is a look at the economic data reports that have informed Action Economics’ forecasts:

The ADP Employment private payroll survey scheduled with a view to release Mar. 4 should lay open a 665,000 February decline that would be consistent with our estimated -650,000 nonfarm payrolls figure, given an assumed 15,000 February ascend in government payrolls. The component breakdown should reveal a 315,000 drop for goods employment with a arrogant 200,000 drop for factories, alongside a 350,000 drop according to the a great quantity larger service sector. We efficacy see a slightly smaller small quantity in the February ADP sight than implied by our payroll estimate given the dependence of the ADP conformation on prior recent payroll declines, which might not fully capture the accelerating downturn we assume is under way.

The weekly initial and continuing jobless claims figures have continued to climb rapidly. In the third part week of February, first letter claims hit the highest level as October 1982, while continuing claims reached an all-time distinguished of 5,112,000 in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ February survey week, when data for the month’s employment report are gathered.

Indeed, continuing claims from that time mid-January accept consistently exceeded the 4,713,000 prior all-time high set back in November 1982, when the jobless rate peaked at 10.8%. Of course, the labor force is trending upward, to such a degree we should expect the continuing claims figures to generally set higher highs with each cycle. Yet the digest climb in the insured unemployment rate to 3.8% in the most fresh week foliage this measure at its highest rate from the time of July 1983—when the overall jobless rate sat at 9.4%.

The consumer assurance surveys have yet to establish a bottom. The February Michigan Consumer Sentiment index fell to 56.3 from 61.2 in January, which leaves the index just short of November’s reading of 55.3—the lowest rendering since June 1980. The Conference Board’s February consumer confidence index dropped to one all-time low of 25 from 37.4. In body, sentiment readings in February have further deteriorated malice hope that the rebound we saw around the turn of the year implied that sentiment was stabilizing. Overall, confidence readings in February show in what plight focused the public is upon the "crisis environment" in this cycle, and that confidence remains deep in recession territory.

The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index for February revealed a welcome uptick in the headline to 35.8 from 35.6, though this measure still remains quite lean. And the employ component fell to an all-time frugal of 26.1, signaling corporeal downside risk as far as concerns Friday’s factory figures for payrolls and hours worked.

The February headlines in the position of the Empire State and the Philadelphia Fed surveys were less encouraging than the ISM headline, by dint of. a round of new lows for the cycle. In etc., the employment components for the Empire State, Philadelphia Fed, and Chicago purchasing managers’ indexes all revealed arrogant declines on the month to new cyclical lows. The facts suggest that the factory sector is deteriorating at an accelerating clip.

The release of the ISM nonmanufacturing report on Mar. 4 should reveal weakness in the service sector as well. We expect a February headline drop to 40 from 42.9 alongside weakness in the associated office measure that is in keeping with our -350,000 peculiar service sector payroll forecast on the side of the month.

In total, we expect the hurry of piece of work less to continue to accelerate through February, with the largest pace of work at jobs lose for the cycle thus far. Many economists now expect a first-quarter thick domestic product decline comparable to the 6.2% rate of decline now reported for the fourth quarter, with risk that this rapid pace of decline may extend into the second quarter. Success for the government’s stimulus design in February should presumably subsist dependent on each associated breaker in consumer confidence and business sentiment. This should more than offset the adverse effects of rising yields and prices in anticipation of future borrowing and excise increases—as would be predicted by most "post-Keynesian" models of economic activity.

It would strike one as being, however, that the effect has been suitable the opposite, as consumers and businesses are now pulling back even more aggressively in the face of what seems to be an accelerating height.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/mar2009/pi2009032_858504.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

The downcast fragment average’s fall below 7,000—and the S&P 500’s aim to stop above 700—show the market is in "uncharted territory"

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On March 2 the Dow closed below 7,000 for the primary proper time since May 1997. Mario Tama/Getty Images

By Ben Steverman

Investors don’t lack ways to measure the carnage on Wall Street. What they’re missing is a room for passing to calculate when the losses will impediment.

In falling markets, technical analysts look to family market history for points where buyers might jump on the frontier into the game. These so-called support levels are places where, at smallest in doctrine, line market momentum should slow or shift.

The 7,000 level for the Dow Jones industrial average is a correct great number, but it definitely wasn’t a support level. On Mar. 2, the Dow blasted through 7,000, dropping almost 300 points, or 4.24%, to 6,763.29.

Rather than a round number, a more commonly cited support horizontal is a previous market low. As the market tumbled last fall, technicians looked back at the lows of the bear market in the early 2000s. In 2002 and 2003, major indexes again and again hit and for this reason bounced off the same support level—about 7,500 for the Dow and about 800 for the broad Standard & Poor’s 500-stock fore-finger.

Yet those support levels were no match for the pecuniary crisis as it worsened. On Nov. 20, the Dow closed at 7,392.27 and the S&P 500 closed at 752.44, wiping out a decade’s worth of stock emporium gains.

Here, stock market technicians seemed to have a new livelihood level. Stocks rallied in late November and December off these lows. Even when the mart faltered, buyers seemed to keep indexes above these seemingly rock-bottom lows.

Then, in late February, the floor fell deficient in: By Mar. 2, the Dow was mercantile at levels not seen since 1997.

A wide variety of technicians and investing experts assume they no longer see any support while burdened with the emporium:

"We’re largely in uncharted territory," says Richard Sparks of Schaeffer’s Investment Research. Technicians would need to look back to 1996 or 1997 for appropriate support levels—and few traders or investors are looking back that far.

"If you’re 40 years of long date, that’session probably when you started investing," says Dave Rovelli, managing director of equity trading at Canaccord Adams. The bottom line, he says: "We’ve taken out each major support level on the Dow."

Uri Landesman of ING Investment Management (ING) says he agrees. "Right now we’re appropriate in a freefall," he says. Major indexes have "wasted through every level of maintenance in the last five years. That’s one of many things that is scaring people."

Without support levels, investors still search for numerical signals of when the selling might stop. One can look at the duration and the weak glue of losses in previous bear markets, for example.

So far, the S&P 500 is down 55% from its crown close of 1,565 on Oct. 9, 2007. The Dow has dropped 52% from its peak on the same day. If you judge of from those October highs, the current uphold emporium has lasted almost 16 months.

An analysis by Sam Stovall of Standard & Poor’s is discouraging towards those who hope the declines just be able to’t reasonably get any worse—or last much longer—than this.

The 15 put up with markets since 1929 have lasted an average of further than 18 months and lost investors a median of 34%. However, as antidote to "mega-meltdowns"—where indexes fell more than 40%—the average drop was 51% and the bear market lasted more than two years.

Between 1929 and 1932, the S&P 500 hem 86%. The 1938 to 1942 suffer emporium lasted 42 months.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/mar2009/pi2009032_496632.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

DEAN RUTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Phil Palios holds a hastily made prodigy while protesting a 10 percent chide cut for Microsoft temporary workers. The Redmond native who has always wanted to work at Microsoft organized a protest Monday night that drew about two dozen transitory workers.

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Phil Palios grew up in Redmond watching Microsoft grow. It’s where he always wanted to work. He was bright to have the chance; fit to get a foot in the door as a contractor. But he became disillusioned with the greatness of the company today and the way it treats its workers, particularly those who are hired through third-party employment agencies. When his employer, Volt, passed on the news Friday that every part of contractors would bear to take a 10 percent pay cut — on account of him it would mean going from $34.25 an hour to about $30.83 — Palios had had sufficiency.

“I had no intention of accepting a 10 percent discharge cut,” Palios said in an interview Monday afternoon at Victor’s Coffee in downtown Redmond, before attending a rare, although minute, labor protest at Microsoft that evening. “So I viewed it as, I am not going to accept this pay divide. They might let me go sooner. I strength persuade black-listed or something, goal I wanted to at least act and make my voice heard and try to unite the workers and require them realize that admitting that they form an alliance — it doesn’t have to subsist a union, if they just toil together — they be possible to have a lot more power and begin to appear up communication channels by the company.”

Palios, 23, in no degree expected to lead a labor movement — and it remains to have being seen how far he’ll get with this one.

Growing up in Redmond, Microsoft has been part of his life almost as long as he can remember. He remembers his parents powerful him the concourse’s expansion announcements would be a big deal for their community. He was inspired by Bill Gates. “Ever as I was a little kid, I wanted to toil at Microsoft and that’session kind of been driving me,” he said.

He took programming classes at Redmond High School, where he participated in Running Start, Washington’s program that allows high-school students to take college classes. He was a member of Lake Washington Online, a network including lots of students from the Lake Washington School District, many of whom went on to jobs at Microsoft, he said. Palios graduated in 2003.

His in the first place draw together at Microsoft began in September 2006. “I started being a contractor because I wanted to win a add a foot of in the door at Microsoft. I wanted to be an FTE and find out which it would take, and what I could do.” He was confident in his skills, but felt he had to prove himself for the reason that he hasn’t earned a bachelor’s degree.

The contract work arrangement at Microsoft didn’t sit well through him from the start. The shrink up companies and Microsoft had too much spirit over the temporary workers, he said. “I kind of felt a part wasn’t right about this,” Palios declared.

His thoughts of organizing contract workers started through a friend who was involved by organized labor at UPS.

After Volt, his draw together agency, told him via e-mail on Friday that he would need to accept a 10 percent pay cut to continue working, he decided to move.

He sent an Outlook meeting request on Monday to more 2,000 make employees business with the same cuts. It asks workers to combine him for a “peaceful protest” every weekday evening between 6 and 8 p.m. until Friday, March 13, in assurance of a distinctly manifest Microsoft sign at the busy intersection of Northeast 40th Street and 156th Avenue Northeast on the corner of the company’s headquarters campus.The meeting request was forwarded on every side of the company.

Palios said he understands the craft logic in the rear of Microsoft’s cost-cutting measures, that have included layoffs, construction delays and wage freezes for full-time employees. He wasn’t surprised when the contractors were come in contact through the pay divide.

“I just think that, at the same time — and haply it’s just a young stupid kid talking — they’re lull making $4 billion in profit. It’s not like they can’t afford to keep paying us what they agreed to make payment to us in our first copy contracts,” he said.

He also questioned the move from the perspective of Microsoft’s long-term strategy.

“You get what you pay for,” Palios said. “… That cut, I think,will ultimately degrade the quality of toil Microsoft gets out of their employees, the quality of family Microsoft gets, especially long-term.”

Palios realizes by declamation out, not to mention organizing a protest against Microsoft using the company’s allow internal e-mail system, he’s risking his job, and in a tough economy. But again, he’s sure of himself.

“Personally I have a lot of self-confidence in my ability to work in the software industry in a variety of different unfolding, test and configuration management jobs,” he said.

So, what does he hope will come of this effort?

“If I can just do one thing, I want to expand commerce among contract workers at Microsoft in Redmond. There’sitting no real way to town talk and we need, ultimately, I would like them to form an alliance, a union, something to be able to negotiate conducive to their rights as employees at Microsoft.”

And suppose that he does lose his job, Palios said he’s willing to devote his newly freed-up schedule to the effort.

Original text: http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2009/03/02/who_is_phil_palios_organizer_of_the_microsoft_cont.html