Trump wants to start charging stores to accept food stamp…

Donald Trump wants to charge retailers a fee for accepting food stamps as payment from the poor.

Trump again touts infrastructure plan during campaign-style speech

President Trump delivered a campaign-style speech June 7 in Cincinnati to again tout his $1 trillion infrastructure plan that remains under development.

“The promise of a safe, reliable and modern infrastructure hasn't been kept, but we're going to keep it,” Trump said. He spoke hours after Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao told a Senate panel a detailed proposal should be finalized before the end of September.

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DOL Withdraws Controversial Obama-Era Independent Contractor Guidance

Photo: Deborah Lockridge

Trucking companies that use independent contractors could be breathing a sigh of relief after the Department of Labor Wednesday withdrew an Obama-era guidance that some viewed as an attack on the owner-operator model used in trucking.

The 2015 Obama administration guidance on independent contractors expanded the definition of employees as part of a crackdown on so-called “misclassification” of employees as contractors.

That guidance said the department would consider most workers to be employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act. It told employers to use an “economic realities test” in determining whether workers are employees.

At the time, the American Trucking Associations called it "an aggressive departure from prevailing classification standards," saying it "no doubt signals an attack on industries like trucking that rely significantly on contractors."

The “economic realities” test has been used by several courts and regulatory agencies for years and includes factors such as:

At the time that guidance originally was issued, Rob Moseley, transportation attorney with Smith Moore Leatherwood LLP, called it “problematic” for the industry, noting, ”A trucking company is not going to be able to say having truckers move your freight isn't an integral part of your business.”

Wednesday's brief announcement on the DOL website said “removal of the administrator interpretations does not change the legal responsibilities of employers under the Fair Labor ...Read the rest of this story

Trump Sticks to Vague Infrastructure Script

Photo: U.S. DOT

President Trump took his infrastructure show on the road June 7, talking up the trillion-dollar investment that he first spoke of the day after the election to a campaign-style rally event at a riverside venue in Cincinnati.

While Trump again touted that big, bold proposal, he revealed little more of what the initiative will consist of when it is eventually presented to Congress.

Only a broad outline of the $1 trillion plan has yet come into focus— the federal government would invest $200 billion in cash and tax credits that would stoke an additional $800 billion in private investment.

In Cincinnati, the president made a pitch for bipartisan action on infrastructure, asking “Democrats and Republicans to work together, if that's possible,” to pass his package.

On the other hand, he also revisited old battles, claiming for example, per his published remarks, that “the Obama Administration's attempt to rebuild the country's infrastructure was an expensive waste that saw little money actually go to infrastructure.”

Speaking at the Rivertowne Marina on the Ohio River, Trump limited his remarks on his infrastructure plan to the importance of rebuilding the nation's inland waterways. Published excerpts note, for example, that inland waterways support more than 270,000 jobs and $30.9 billion in economic activity and that “our inland waterway system requires $8.7 billion in maintenance and the maintenance backlog is only getting worse.”

But it was the president's continued insistence in Cincinnati on the overwhelming importance of private investment to fix what he called America's “crumbling infrastructure” that garnered outright rebuke from the Alliance for Toll-Free Interstates. “Privatizing our infrastructure through public-private partnerships will not solve our nation's transportation problems,” said Stephanie Kane, ATFI spokesperson, in a statement.

“To be clear,” she continued, “when President Trump spoke today [June 7] about ‘private dollars' in infrastructure, specifically ...Read the rest of this story

Boeing studies ‘mild to wild’ design for pivotal mid-market jet

Boeing has looked at options "from mild to wild" for the design of a proposed mid-market jet, a senior executive said, hinting at a breakthrough that industry sources say will create building blocks for future models. Marketing Vice President Randy Tinseth said Boeing would leapfrog reported plans by Airbus to update its hot-selling A321neo, as Boeing eyes a gap between narrow-body jets and long-haul aircraft for a potential new mid-market airplane. "We have looked at the mild and we have looked at the wild and I can tell you we know that if you are going to address that market, you need a new airplane," Tinseth told Reuters after a two-day meeting of airline leaders in Mexico.

Comey told Trump 3 times that he wasn’t under investigation, but his refusal to say so publicly infuriated Trump

James Comey, the former FBI director, said he told President Donald Trump on three occasions that...

Trucking HR Canada survey deadline just five weeks away