Sunday, June 30, 2013

The Expendables: How The Temps Who Power Corporate Giants Are Getting Crushed

The Expendables: How The Temps Who Power Corporate Giants Are Getting Crushed


It's 4:18 a.m. and the strip mall is deserted. But tucked in back, next to a closed-down video store, an employment agency is already filling up. Rosa Ramirez walks in, as she has done nearly every morning for the past six months. She signs in and sits down in one of the 100 or so blue plastic chairs that fill the office. Over the next three hours, dispatchers will bark out the names of who will work today. Rosa waits, wondering if she will make her rent.
In cities all across the country, workers stand on street corners, line up in alleys or wait in a neon-lit beauty salon for rickety vans to whisk them off to warehouses miles away. Some vans are so packed that to get to work, people must squat on milk crates, sit on the laps of passengers they do not know or sometimes lie on the floor, the other workers' feet on top of them.
This is not Mexico. It is not Guatemala or Honduras. This is Chicago, New Jersey, Boston.
The people here are not day laborers looking for an odd job from a passing contractor. They are regular employees of temp agencies working in the supply chain of many of America's largest companies 2013 Walmart, Macy's, Nike, Frito-Lay. They make our frozen pizzas, sort the recycling from our trash, cut our vegetables and clean our imported fish. They unload clothing and toys made overseas and pack them to fill our store shelves. They are as important to the global economy as shipping containers and Asian garment workers.
Many get by on minimum wage, renting rooms in rundown houses, eating dinners of beans and potatoes, and surviving on food banks and taxpayer-funded health care. They almost never get benefits and have little opportunity for advancement.
Across America, temporary work has become a mainstay of the economy, leading to the proliferation of what researchers have begun to call "temp towns." They are often dense Latino neighborhoods teeming with temp agencies. Or they are cities where it has become nearly impossible even for whites and African-Americans with vocational training to find factory and warehouse work without first being directed to a temp firm.
In June, the Labor Department reported that the nation had more temp workers than ever before: 2.7 million. Overall, almost one-fifth of the total job growth since the recession ended in mid-2009 has been in the temp sector, federal data shows. But according to the American Staffing Association, the temp industry's trade group, the pool is even larger: Every year, a tenth of all U.S. workers finds a job at a staffing agency.
The proportion of temp workers in the labor force reached its peak in early 2000 before the 2001 slump and then the Great Recession. But as the economy continues its slow, uneven recovery, temp work is roaring back 10 times faster than private-sector employment as a whole 2013 a pace "exceeding even the dramatic run-up of the early 1990s," according to the staffing association.
The overwhelming majority of that growth has come in blue-collar work in factories and warehouses, as the temp industry sheds the Kelly Girl image of the past. Last year, more than one in every 20 blue-collar workers was a temp.
Several temp agencies, such as Adecco and Manpower, are now among the largest employers in the United States. One list put Kelly Services as second only to Walmart.
"We're seeing just more and more industries using business models that attempt to change the employment relationship or obscure the employment relationship," said Mary Beth Maxwell, a top official in the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division. "While it's certainly not a new phenomenon, it's rapidly escalating. In the last 10 to 15 years, there's just a big shift to this for a lot more workers 2013 which makes them a lot more vulnerable."
The temp system insulates the host companies from workers' compensation claims, unemployment taxes, union drives and the duty to ensure that their workers are citizens or legal immigrants. In turn, the temps suffer high injury rates, according to federal officials and academic studies, and many of them endure hours of unpaid waiting and face fees that depress their pay below minimum wage.
The rise of the blue-collar permatemp helps explain one of the most troubling aspects of the phlegmatic recovery. Despite a soaring stock market and steady economic growth, many workers are returning to temporary or part-time jobs. This trend is intensifying America's decades-long rise in income inequality, in which low- and middle-income workers have seen their real wages stagnate or decline. On average, temps earn 25 percent less than permanent workers.
Many economists predict the growth of temp work will continue beyond the recession, in part because of health-care reform, which some economists say will lead employers to hire temps to avoid the costs of covering full-time workers.

The Rise of 'Temp Towns'

Rosa, a 49-year-old Mexican immigrant with thin glasses and a curly bob of brown hair, has been a temp worker for the better part of 12 years. She has packed free samples for Walmart, put together displays for Sony, printed ads for Marlboro, made air filters for the Navy and boxed textbooks for elite colleges and universities. None of the work led to a full-time job.
Even though some assignments last months, such as her recent job packaging razors for Philips Norelco, every day is a crapshoot for Rosa. She must first check in at the temp agency in Hanover Park, Ill., by 4:30 a.m. and wait. If she is lucky enough to be called, she must then take a van or bus to the worksite. And even though the agency, Staffing Network, is her legal employer, she is not paid until she gets to the assembly line at 6 a.m.
In Kane County, Ill., where Rosa lives, one in every 16 workers is a temp. Such high concentrations of temp workers exist in Grand Rapids, Mich.; Middlesex County, N.J.; Memphis, Tenn.; the Inland Empire of California; and Lehigh County, Pa. In New Jersey, white vans zip through an old Hungarian neighborhood in New Brunswick, picking up workers at temp agencies along French Street. In Joliet, Ill., one temp agency operated out of a motel meeting room once a week, supplying labor to the layers of logistics contractors at one of Walmart's biggest warehouses. In Greenville County, S.C., near BMW's U.S. manufacturing plant, one in 11 workers was a temp in 2011. A decade before, it was one in 22.
In temp towns, it is not uncommon to find warehouses with virtually no employees of their own. Many temp workers say they have worked in the same factory day in and day out for years. José Miguel Rojo, for example, packed frozen pizzas for a Walmart supplier every day for eight years as a temp until he was injured last summer and lost his job. (Walmart said Rojo wasn't its employee and that it wants its suppliers to treat their workers well.)
In some lines of work, huge numbers of full-time workers have been replaced by temps. One in five manual laborers who move and pack merchandise is now a temp. As is one in six assemblers who work in a team, such as those at auto plants.
To be sure, many temp assignments serve a legitimate and beneficial purpose. Temp agencies help companies weather sudden or seasonal upswings and provide flexibility for uncertain times. Employees try out jobs, gain skills and transition to full-time work.
"I think our industry has been good for North America, as far as keeping people working," said Randall Hatcher, president of MAU Workforce Solutions, which supplies temps to BMW. "I get laid off by Employer A and go over here to Employer B, and maybe they have a job for me. People get a lot of different experiences. An employee can work at four to five different companies and then maybe decide this is what I want to do."
Companies like the "flexibility," he added. "To be able to call someone and say, 'I need 100 people' is very powerful. It allows them to meet orders that they might not otherwise."
But over the years, many companies have upended that model and stretched the definition of "temporary work."
At least 840,000 temp workers are like Rosa: working blue-collar jobs and earning less than $25,000 a year, a ProPublica analysis of federal labor data found. Only about 30 percent of industrial temp jobs will become permanent, according to a survey by Staffing Industry Analysts.
By 4:52 a.m., the chairs at Rosa's temp agency are filled, and workers line the walls, clutching plastic bags that contain their lunches. From behind the tall white counter, the voice of an unseen dispatcher booms like a game-show host, calling out the first batch of workers: ___ Mendoza, ___ Rosales, ___ Centeno, ___ Martinez, ...
It is a practice that George Gonos, a sociologist at SUNY-Potsdam who has spent his career studying the temp industry, calls the modern version of the "shape-up" 2013 a practice in which longshoremen would line up in front of a boss, who would pick them one by one for work on the docks.
The day after Thanksgiving 1960, Edward R. Murrow broadcast a report called "Harvest of Shame," documenting the plight of migrant farmworkers. Temp workers today face many similar conditions in how they get hired, how they get to work, how they live and what they can afford to eat. Adjusted for inflation, those farmworkers earned roughly the same 50 years ago as many of today's temp workers, including Rosa. In fact, some of the same farm towns featured in Murrow's report have now been built up with warehouses filled with temps.
As before, the products change by the season. But now, instead of picking strawberries, tomatoes and corn, the temp workers pack chocolates for Valentine's Day, barbecue grills for Memorial Day, turkey pans for Thanksgiving, clothing and toys for Christmas.
African-Americans make up 11 percent of the overall workforce but more than 20 percent of temp workers. Willie Pearson, who is African-American, has been a full-time worker at BMW's South Carolina plant for 14 years. But since at least 2005, he said, he hasn't seen anyone who's "been hired straight on. It's all been through temporary agencies." The company says "after six months they can hire them," he said, "but I'd say it's only one out of five" who actually lands a full-time job.
BMW did not return calls for this story.
Latinos make up about 20 percent of all temp workers. In many temp towns, agencies have flocked to neighborhoods full of undocumented immigrants, finding labor that is kept cheap in part by these workers' legal vulnerability: They cannot complain without risking deportation.

Labor Sharks and Kelly Girls

Many people believe that the use of temp workers simply grew organically, filling a niche that companies demanded in an ever-changing global economy. But decades before "outsourcing" was even a word, the temp industry campaigned to persuade corporate America that permanent workers were a burden.
The industry arose after World War II as the increase in office work led to a need for secretaries and typists for short assignments. At the time, nearly every state had laws regulating employment agents in order to stop the abuses of labor sharks, who charged exorbitant fees to new European immigrants in the early 1900s. Presenting temp work as a new industry, big temp firms successfully lobbied to rewrite those laws so that they didn't apply to temp firms.
In the 1960s, agencies such as Kelly Services and Manpower advertised their services as women's work, providing "pin money" to housewives, according to Erin Hatton, a SUNY Buffalo sociologist and author of The Temp Economy. And they marketed the advantages of workers that the host company wasn't responsible for -- a theme that continues today.
One 1971 Kelly Girl ad that Hatton found, called "The Never-Never Girl," featured a woman biting a pencil. The copy read:
Never takes a vacation or holiday. Never asks for a raise. Never costs you a dime for slack time. (When the workload drops, you drop her.) Never has a cold, slipped disc or loose tooth. (Not on your time anyway!) Never costs you for unemployment taxes and social security payments. (None of the paperwork, either!) Never costs you for fringe benefits. (They add up to 30% of every payroll dollar.) Never fails to please. (If our Kelly Girl employee doesn't work out, you don't pay. We're that sure of all our girls.)
Carl Camden, the current chief executive of Kelly Services, said the anachronistic language was a response to the chauvinistic attitude of the time. "It wasn't typical to see women working," he said. "So you had that work often positioned as not real work. The way the media could sell it as sociologically acceptable was making money for Christmas, something you were doing on the side for your family." (Manpower didn't return calls for this story.)
Gradually, temp firms began moving into blue-collar work. At the end of the 1960s -- a decade in which the American economy grew by 50 percent -- temp agencies began selling the idea of temping out entire departments. Relying on temps only for seasonal work and uncertain times was foolish, the agencies told managers over the next two decades. Instead, they said companies should have a core of, say, five employees supplemented by as many as 50 temps, Hatton wrote.
The temp industry boomed in the 1990s, as the rise of just-in-time manufacturing drove just-in-time labor. But it also gained by promoting itself as the antidote to bad publicity over layoffs. If a company laid off a large portion of its workforce, it could make big news and leave customers feeling sour. But if a company simply cut its temps, it was easy to write it off as seasonal -- and the host company could often avoid the federal requirement that it notify workers of mass layoffs in advance.
More recently, temp firms have successfully lobbied to change laws or regulatory interpretations in 31 states, so that workers who lose their assignments and are out of work cannot get unemployment benefits unless they check back in with the temp firm for another assignment.

'You Are Not Driving Goats'

Rosa lives in the living room of an old Victorian boarding house. There is a cheap mattress on the floor, and a sheet blocks the French doors that separate her room from the hallway. The rent is $450 a month, which she splits with her boyfriend who works as a carpet installer. She shares a kitchen and bathroom with another family. A trap by her door guards against the rats that have woken her up at night.
Rosa came to the United States in 1997 from Ecatepec, Mexico, where she struggled to raise two sons on her own as a street vendor of beauty supplies. When she found out a neighbor had hired a coyote to help her cross the border, Rosa joined her, leaving her children with family and taking a bus to the frontera. They walked for three days across the desert to a meeting point, where a bus took them to a safe house in Phoenix and then to Cullman, Ala.
By the time she arrived in Cullman, Rosa recalled, her shoes were so full of holes that her first mission was to go to a strip mall and dig through a clothing donation bin for a new pair.
"I worked in a poultry plant and a restaurant at the same time so I could get enough money to send back to Mexico," she said. Like Rosa, many undocumented immigrants who spoke for this story landed full-time jobs when they first arrived in the 1990s. But many of them lost their jobs when factories closed during the recent recession and have since found only temp work.
Another temp worker, Judith Iturralde, traced the shift back even earlier, to the immigration crackdowns after 9/11. She said that after she returned to work from surgery in 2002, the compact-disc warehouse she worked at told her it could no longer employ her because she didn't have papers. They directed her to a temp firm, she said, and a few years later, she returned to the same warehouse, still undocumented.
After raising enough money, Rosa returned to Mexico and brought her two teenage sons across the desert and back to Alabama, where they worked full-time at a lumberyard. After her son got hurt on the job, they moved to Chicago, hoping for a better life.
But the only work Rosa was able to find was at temp agencies.
It is now 5:03 a.m. at Staffing Network, and the first batch of workers waits outside to board the school bus for Norelco. The agency said it offers complimentary transportation for its employees' benefit. But worker advocates say vans help the temp agencies by ensuring they provide their corporate clients with the right number of workers at the right time.
Many metro areas don't have adequate transportation from the working-class neighborhoods to the former farmland where warehouses have sprouted over the past 15 years. So a system of temp vans has popped up, often contracted by the agencies. Workers in several cities said they feel pressured to get on the vans or lose the job. They usually pay $7 to $8 a day for the round trip.
Workers describe the vans as dangerously overcrowded with as many as 22 people stuffed into a 15-passenger van. In New Jersey, one worker drew a diagram of how his temp agency fit 17 people into a minivan, using wooden benches and baby seats and having three workers crouch in the trunk space.
"They push and push us in until we get like cigarettes in a box," said one Illinois worker. "Sometimes I say, 'Hey, you are not driving goats!'"
Several workers said the temp agency had left them stranded at times. Vicente Ramos, a father of six who lives in New Jersey, recalled how several years ago he and other workers walked for three hours one night after the van failed to show up.
"We were getting hungry and thirsty, and we could barely walk, and our feet were hurting," Ramos said. "They still charged us for the ride."

A New Temp Ecosystem

It is now 5:20 a.m., and a second batch of workers has been called for Norelco. Dispatchers are starting to tap workers for Start Sampling, which provides free samples of items like shampoos, coffee and cat food on behalf of retailers and consumer product companies.
The dispatchers have called several other workers named Rosa. Each time, her ears perk up, but it is always another last name. She goes to the counter and asks the dispatchers if they think there will be work today. They tell her there's not much but to wait a little longer in case a company calls to say they need more bodies.
Two months before, in November, Rosa walked into the temp agency with something to say. She had been attending meetings of the Chicago Workers' Collaborative, a nonprofit that advocates for temp workers and is funded by various religious and anti-poverty foundations. Though Rosa became increasingly active, her only source of income is temp jobs.
"My name is Rosa Ramirez," she said, flanked by leaders of the workers collaborative, who recorded the speech on a cellphone. "We wanted to read some points that we want to change here in this office."
"Stop forcing workers to wait without pay before the work shift," Rosa said, standing in the center of the room and reading from a paper she had brought.
"Allow workers to go directly to the worksite, because some people have children, and they can't find care that early."
The workers sitting in the bucket chairs looked down nervously, not sure what would happen next.
Rosa read on. "Don't force employees to wait outside of the office until transportation arrives during the winter months."
"We don't want to be loaded into trucks or vans," Rosa said. "Because they carry us like sardines."
Looking back on that day, Rosa said she feels empowered at times but at other times defeated.
"I no longer could stand the abuses," Rosa said. "I see people accepting them, and so I thought by standing up and speaking, I was hoping that people would join me and would agree and would stand up for themselves. But unfortunately, the majority of the people did not."
Staffing Network said in a statement that workers weren't required to come to the branch office. Many workers, it said, get hired by calling about job opportunities and then go directly to their worksites.
"Our track record of being a fair and lawful employer is evidenced by the fact that more than 65 percent of the temporary employees we hire and place have worked with Staffing Network for one year or more," the company wrote. "We provide all employees opportunities to voice any questions or concerns about any aspects of their jobs -- without any retaliation."
Unions, on the ropes nationwide, have historically done little for temp workers. The temp industry initially won union backing by promising never to cross picket lines. But in 1985, the Federal Trade Commission ruled that the trade association could not force its members to honor that pledge; so they didn't.
"Unions have had two souls when it comes to temp workers," said Harley Shaiken, a longtime labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley. One is to try to include them, he said, but "the other is circle the wagons, protect the full-time workers that are there."
Will Collette, who led an AFL-CIO campaign against the temp firm Labor Ready in the early 2000s, said it was nearly impossible to organize workers with such a high turnover.
And recent rulings have tied union hands. A 2004 order by the National Labor Relations Board barred temp workers from joining with permanent workers for collective bargaining unless both the temp agency and the host company agree to the arrangement.
Some temp firms have even promoted themselves as experts at maintaining a union-free workplace. In a proposal for the off-road vehicle maker Polaris, the temp agency Westaff, a division of the Select Family of Staffing Companies, said its team was specially trained to spot early warning signs of union activity, such as "groups of workers huddling, then quieting when managers appear."
Meanwhile, a whole ecosystem of contractors and subcontractors benefits from the flexibility of just-in-time labor. For example, Walmart's two largest warehouse complexes are southwest of Chicago and in the Inland Empire east of Los Angeles. Both are managed by Schneider Logistics, which in turn subcontracts to an ever-changing cast of third-party logistics firms and staffing companies.
Such layers of temp agencies have helped Walmart avoid responsibility when regulators have uncovered problems or when workers have tried to sue, accusing the company of wage or safety violations. For example, when California inspected Walmart's Inland Empire warehouse in 2011 and found that workers were being paid piece-rate according to how many shipping containers they unloaded, rather than by the hour, regulators issued more than $1 million in fines against the subcontractors for failing to show how the pay was calculated. Neither Walmart nor Schneider faced penalties.
Asked if the layers of subcontracting allow Walmart to escape blame, spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said, "Absolutely not."
"We work very hard to abide by the law," she said, "and we expect all the businesses that we do business with and that they do business with to comply with the law."
Schneider treats its associates with "dignity and respect," spokeswoman Janet Bonkowski wrote in an email. "Our suppliers are independent," she said. "When we utilize third-party vendors, we contractually require full compliance with all required laws and that all parties conduct business ethically."
As work is downsourced through a cascade of subcontractors, some workers have been paid wages below the legal minimum or seen their incomes decline over the years.
Berto Gutierrez, who has worked several stints at the Walmart warehouse in Elwood, Ill., provided ProPublica with a copy of a 2011 paycheck from subcontractor Eclipse Advantage. The check shows he was paid only $57.81 for 12.5 hours of work, or $4.62 an hour. Neither Eclipse, Schneider nor Walmart provided an explanation for Gutierrez's paycheck.
In 2007, Leticia Rodriguez was hired directly by Simos, the logistics contractor running the online part of Walmart's Elwood warehouse. She said she worked as a supervisor on an annual contract for $49,500 a year, with health insurance. In 2009, when she declined to come in on what she described as a long-awaited day off, she was fired.
Rodriguez returned to the warehouse six months later, this time starting at the bottom, loading trucks for one of Schneider's staffing companies. She said she was paid $15 an hour, but within a year the staffing company lost the contract.
Eclipse Advantage took over, and Rodriguez went to work for that company. There, she said, she got paid piece-rate, averaging about $9.50 an hour. But six months later, Eclipse left, and she and all the other workers lost their jobs. Rodriguez has since interned at the union-backed campaign Warehouse Workers for Justice, earning $12,000.
Eclipse's president, David Simono, declined to comment. Simos didn't return calls. Walmart said it couldn't comment on the specifics of a subcontractor's employee but said it provides all its workers opportunities for growth.

'We've Seen Just Ghastly Situations'

The growing temporary sector does little to sustain workers' standard of living. Temp agencies consistently rank among the worst large industries for the rate of wage and hour violations, according a ProPublica analysis of federal enforcement data. A 2005 Labor Department survey, the most recent available, found that only 4 percent of temps have pensions or retirement plans from their employers. Only 8 percent get health insurance from their employers, compared with 56 percent of permanent workers. What employers don't provide, workers get from the social safety net, i.e., taxpayers.
And don't look for Obamacare to fix it. Under the law, employers must provide health coverage only to employees who average 30 hours a week or more. After pressurefrom the temp industry and others, the IRS ruled that companies have up to a year to determine if workers qualify.
With the major provisions of health-care reform set to take effect in 2014, there's growing evidence that 2013 is becoming a boom year for temping out. TempWorks, which sells software that keeps track of payroll and worker orders, says sales to staffing agencies have been going through the roof and that temp firms tell them theuptick is because of Obamacare.
Unlike the way it monitors nearly every other industry, the government does not keep statistics on injuries among temp workers. But a study of workers compensation datain Washington state found that temp workers in construction and manufacturing were twice as likely to be injured as regular staff doing the same work.
In April, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced aninitiative to get better information on temp-worker safety. "Employers, we think, do not have the same commitment to providing a safe workplace, to providing the proper training, to a worker who they may only be paying for a few weeks." OSHA director David Michaels said in an interview. "I mean, we've seen just ghastly situations."
In December 2011, a Chicago temp worker died after he was scalded by a citric acid solution. The skin cream and shampoo factory he was assigned to failed to call 911 even as his skin was peeling from his body. In August 2012, a Jacksonville temp wascrushed to death on his first day of work at a bottling plant when a supervisor told him to clean glass from underneath a machine that stacks goods onto pallets -- a job that OSHA said he wasn't trained to do. And in January, a temp was killed at a paper mill outside Charlotte, N.C., when he was overcome by toxic fumes while cleaning the inside of a chemical tank.
"There's something going on here that needs direct intervention," Michaels said.

A Temp Worker Bill of Rights

Members of Congress have introduced a handful of bills protecting temp workers in the past two decades. None have made it out of committee. Efforts on the state level have met similar resistance.
But worker advocates and some temp agencies say the Massachusetts Temporary Workers Right-to-Know Law, which took effect in January, provides a model for other states.
That law requires temp agencies to give workers written notice of the basics: whom they will work for, how much they'll be paid and what safety equipment they'll need. The law limits transportation costs and prohibits fees that would push workers' pay below minimum wage. Agencies must also reimburse the worker if they are sent to a worksite only to find out there is no job for them there.
Similar state bills have passed in New Jersey and Illinois in the past few years. But while the American Staffing Association has a code of ethics containing similar guidelines, it has fought against such laws and blocked them in California and New York. "All laws that apply to every other employee apply to temporary workers," said Stephen Dwyer, the group's general counsel. "We thought that heaping new laws on top of existing laws would not be effective."
Even in states that have them, the laws are honored mostly in the breach. For example, Illinois prohibits temp agencies from charging for transportation. But many have gotten around the law by using so-called raiteros, who act as neighborhood labor brokers for the agencies and charge for transportation. The law also requires an employment notice stating the name of the host company, the hourly wage and any equipment needed. Out of more than 50 Chicago-area workers interviewed for this story, only a handful had ever received one.
Passing through Chicago's working-class suburbs recently, Rosa pointed out the car window to a row of small redbrick homes.
"I've always dreamed of having a little house, a really small, little house," she said.
Asked if she thought she'd ever be able to buy one, Rosa laughed.
"Earning $8.25 an hour?" she said. "I don't think I'll ever be able to do that."
Back at the temp agency, Rosa continues to wait with about 50 other people.
Around 6 a.m., she again inquires if there will be any work. The dispatcher tells her to give it 15 more minutes.
Then he breaks the news: There is no work today.

NSA Surveillance Prompts Several Bills But Little Action In Congress

NSA Surveillance Prompts Several Bills But Little Action In Congress


WASHINGTON -- In the three weeks since Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency's widespread surveillance programs, the legislative response to his revelations on Capitol Hill has slowed to a glacial pace and public obsession has noticeably shifted from a debate on national security versus privacy to Snowden's latest whereabouts.
Civil liberties advocates in Congress introduced a slew of bills in response to reports that the NSA has been collecting phone records from millions of Americans andmining electronic communications from nine major Internet companies:
But the one thing they lack is a timeline for when, or if, anything will actually get done. While the need to address the scope of the NSA programs has been raised in Judiciary committee hearings held by Leahy, none of the bills aimed at doing that has progressed beyond picking up a few cosponsors.
The Merkley-Lee bill has gained the most traction, with 12 cosponsors from both sides of the aisle. Merkley, Lee, Udall, Wyden, Paul and Leahy are joined by Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), and Jon Tester (D-Mont.). A companion piece of legislation was also introduced in the House of Representatives last week, but with fewer backers.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters earlier this month that any legislation in response to the NSA surveillance must go through the Judiciary committee. Leahy's office was unable to provide information on if and when the bill might be marked up.
Even then, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) predicted the FISA declassification bill would be unlikely to pass Congress and even more unlikely to be signed into law by President Barack Obama.
"I encourage this, though I think it is going to be ill-fated," Durbin said of the billafter its introduction. "I just don't see a freight train coming down the track."
Part of the problem is that most members of Congress have shown little appetite to change the nature the surveillance methods. In an era of extreme partisanship that earned the legislative body its "Do-Nothing" label, the one issue bipartisan majorities seem to agree on is that the federal government can employ far-reaching measures in the name of national security.
"It's not an issue of whether anyone cares or not," said Jim Manley, Reid's former top spokesman. "I think that the fact is, based on the intelligence briefings that they have received, that many members support the NSA programs because they honestly believe that the country faces some very real threats from individuals and organizations that want to do real damage to this country."
The other roadblock to an NSA legislative fix is a combination of timing and the public's short attention span. The revelations preceded monumental Supreme Court rulings on gay marriage and the Voting Rights Act, and the passage of comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate. With formal federal charges issued against Snowden, discussions around the NSA are now focused on whether the contractorwill be extradited or granted asylum by a sympathetic government.
While lawmakers and aides are all too aware that only a minority is willing to debate the NSA revelations, they are nonetheless intent on keeping the issue alive.
"The secret collection of the phone records of millions of Americans reminds us why we need sensible limits on the government’s surveillance powers," Udall said in a statement to The Huffington Post. "Now is the time to have an informed public debate about how we protect our cherished Constitutional rights while also keeping our nation secure."
"We need to have a debate over the extent of our surveillance state," said a Senate Democratic aide. "And if we don’t start that debate soon in Congress, the public’s attention will move on to other matters, if it hasn’t already."

North Carolina Dropped From Federal Unemployment Program

North Carolina Dropped From Federal Unemployment Program


RALEIGH, N.C. -- With changes to its unemployment law taking effect this weekend, North Carolina not only is cutting benefits for those who file new claims, it will become the first state disqualified from a federal compensation program for the long-term jobless.
State officials adopted the package of benefit cuts and increased taxes for businesses in February, a plan designed to accelerate repayment of a $2.5 billion federal debt. Like many states, North Carolina had racked up the debt by borrowing from Washington after its unemployment fund was drained by jobless benefits during the Great Recession.
The changes go into effect Sunday for North Carolina, which has the country's fifth-worst jobless rate. The cuts on those who make unemployment claims on or after that day will disqualify the state from receiving federally funded Emergency Unemployment Compensation. That money kicks in after the state's period of unemployment compensation – now shortened from up to six months to no more than five – runs out. The EUC program is available to long-term jobless in all states. But keeping the money flowing includes a requirement that states can't cut average weekly benefits.
Because North Carolina leaders cut average weekly benefits for new claims, about 170,000 workers whose state benefits expire this year will lose more than $700 million in EUC payments, the U.S. Labor Department said.
Lee Creighton, 45, of Cary, said he's been unemployed since October, and this is the last week for which he'll get nearly $500 in unemployment aid. He said he was laid off from a position managing statisticians and writers amid the recession's worst days in 2009 and has landed and lost a series of government and teaching jobs since then – work that paid less half as much. His parents help him buy groceries to get by.
"I'm just not sure what I'm going to do," said Creighton, who has a doctorate. "What are we to do? Is the state prepared to have this many people with no source of income?"
With the changes to North Carolina law, state benefits will last three to five months – at the longer end when unemployment rates are higher. Qualifying for benefits becomes more difficult. Weekly payments for those collecting the current maximum benefit of $535 drop to $350, falling from the highest in the Southeast to comparable with neighboring states.
Republican leaders who control the General Assembly sought an exception to the federal law two months before voting to change unemployment benefits. Congress last year allowed Pennsylvania, Indiana, Arkansas and Rhode Island to proceed with cuts to weekly benefits that their legislatures had approved for after the expected expiration of federal benefits, which later were extended.
North Carolina's request was never acted on.
Other states this year cut unemployment benefits and restricted eligibility, but none included drops in weekly benefits, said George Wentworth of the National Employment Law Project, a worker-advocacy group.
All states are aware of the no-reduction provision, said Doug Holmes, who heads the National Foundation for Unemployment Compensation & Workers' Compensation, which represents businesses on unemployment insurance issues.
"Many of them considered doing something that would reduce the weekly benefit amount, but for whatever reason chose not to take the step of enacting legislation," he said. "But North Carolina also had one of the biggest problems."
Twenty states carry such federal debt. The Labor Department declined to comment on North Carolina's looming situation but said no other state is considering changing benefits in a way that would imperil U.S. help.
Supporters of the new North Carolina law say the reduced benefits and increased business taxes are necessary to repay the federal debt – the third-largest in the country.
Labor groups, Democratic congressmen and the state NAACP want to delay the cuts until the federal program expires in January, but lawmakers and GOP Gov. Pat McCrory have refused.
Delaying would burden businesses and potentially increase the debt, said Rep. Julia Howard, R-Davie. The cuts also will push people to find work faster, then move to a better job as the economy improves, she said.
"It may not be the job that you want or your career for the rest of your life. But to take a job, get back into the job market," Howard said.
Opponents who have staged protests nearly every week against Republican policies say lawmakers are slashing a safety net for the poor while corporations and the wealthy benefit.
Overall, the changes will mean $3.6 billion in total benefit cuts and higher costs to employers through 2017, according to the General Assembly's fiscal research office. Benefit cuts on the jobless make up 74 percent of that figure. The accelerated target for repaying the federal debt, which fell to $2.1 billion in June, is sometime in 2015 rather than 2018.
North Carolina companies now pay an additional $42 per employee yearly to pay the debt. Without the changes, businesses' unemployment insurance taxes would rise by $21 per employee every year until the federal debt is paid.
The state's top business lobby, the North Carolina Chamber, primarily assembled the package of proposals that lawmakers adopted.
"You've got to pick a point in time where you solve the problem. They picked a point in time that allowed us the most time to pay the debt as quickly as we can and get a new program in place so that we can help people find work," said Gary Salamido, the group's top lobbyist. "It's a very unfortunate circumstance for everybody involved."
Wayne Bostick, 58, of Raleigh, said he lost his job in April 2011 and will lose extended federal benefits immediately. He said he earned about $700 a week in take-home pay, often working double shifts at a ConAgra Foods plant until it shut down after a fatal explosion. Since then, he said, the only jobs he's found matching his skills pay less than $10 an hour and are outside Raleigh. Now he'll have to revisit those or start a handyman business.
"I'd rather do that than bring home $200" after commuting and taxes, he said. "They are really putting the gun to your head now."

6-29-13, HIGH TEMPERATURES FROM AROUND THE MOJAVE DESERT AND SOUTHERN GREAT BASIN

NOUS45 KVEF 300037
PNSVEF

PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LAS VEGAS NV
537 PM PDT SAT JUN 29 2013

BELOW IS A LIST OF UNOFFICIAL HIGH TEMPERATURES FROM AROUND THE 
MOJAVE DESERT AND SOUTHERN GREAT BASIN FROM TODAY. 

...LATEST HIGH TEMPERATURE REPORTS...

LOCATION                       TEMP      TIME/DATE                            

...CADIZ BASIN...
7 SE ESSEX (2644 FT)           110       0500 PM 06/29                        

...DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK...
9 SSW OASIS (5399 FT)          99        0500 PM 06/29                        
25 ESE PANAMINT SPRINGS        96        0450 PM 06/29                        
8 ENE STOVEPIPE WELLS (339 FT) 125       0508 PM 06/29                        
25 SW LIDA (2975 FT)           110       0434 PM 06/29                        

...EASTERN MOJAVE DESERT, INCLUDING THE MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE...
24 SSW NIPTON (5365 FT)        98        0451 PM 06/29                        
9 SSW BAKER (846 FT)           117       0500 PM 06/29                        
10 W MOUNTAIN PASS (3643 FT)   106       0500 PM 06/29                        
25 S MOUNTAIN PASS (3238 FT)   106       0435 PM 06/29                        
18 SSE NIPTON (4324 FT)        103       0435 PM 06/29                        
HORSE THIEF SPRINGS RAWS       102       0451 PM 06/29                        

...EASTERN SIERRA SLOPES OF INYO COUNTY...
OAK CK RAWS (4900 FT)          98        0442 PM 06/29                        

...ESMERALDA AND CENTRAL NYE COUNTY...
30 W RACHEL (5761 FT)          99        0456 PM 06/29                        
26 ENE BEATTY (5451 FT)        99        0445 PM 06/29                        
26 E SCOTTYS JUNCTION          98        0445 PM 06/29                        
1 SSE GOLDFIELD (6017 FT)      95        0440 PM 06/29                        
36 ENE BEATTY (7525 FT)        89        0445 PM 06/29                        
13 NNE MERCURY (3157 FT)       110       0445 PM 06/29                        
16 N MERCURY (3606 FT)         108       0445 PM 06/29                        
BEATTY (3215 FT)               107       0440 PM 06/29                        
1 ESE DYER (4855 FT)           106       0449 PM 06/29                        
23 N MERCURY (3990 FT)         106       0445 PM 06/29                        
27 N MERCURY (4075 FT)         105       0445 PM 06/29                        
32 N MERCURY (4228 FT)         105       0445 PM 06/29                        
19 N MERCURY (3916 FT)         105       0445 PM 06/29                        
30 N MERCURY (4255 FT)         105       0445 PM 06/29                        
13 NNW LATHROP WELLS (4937 FT) 104       0445 PM 06/29                        
11 NE BEATTY (4593 FT)         103       0451 PM 06/29                        
22 NNW MERCURY (4716 FT)       103       0445 PM 06/29                        
37 NNW MERCURY (5310 FT)       102       0445 PM 06/29                        
28 ENE BEATTY (5059 FT)        101       0445 PM 06/29                        
34 SW RACHEL (5112 FT)         101       0445 PM 06/29                        

...LAKE HAVASU AND FORT MOHAVE...
HAVASU RAWS (475 FT)           122       0452 PM 06/29                        
2 NW LAKE HAVASU CITY (467 FT) 121       0519 PM 06/29                        
3 N NEEDLES (554 FT)           120       0434 PM 06/29                        
LAKE HAVASU CITY ALERT         120       0459 PM 06/29                        
5 ENE LAKE HAVASU CITY         119       0438 PM 06/29                        
4 ESE DESERT HILLS (1080 FT)   118       0444 PM 06/29                        
MOHAVE COUNTY YARD (463 FT)    118       0501 PM 06/29                        
6 ESE DESERT HILLS (1487 FT)   115       0517 PM 06/29                        

...LAKE MEAD NATIONAL RECREATION AREA...
3 NE BULLHEAD CITY (1198 FT)   122       0516 PM 06/29                        
1 E BULLHEAD CITY (984 FT)     122       0438 PM 06/29                        
4 SW LAUGHLIN (549 FT)         122       0434 PM 06/29                        
BULLHEAD CITY ALERT (564 FT)   122       0442 PM 06/29                        
3 WSW LAUGHLIN (1830 FT)       121       0503 PM 06/29                        
4 ESE BULLHEAD CITY (538 FT)   120       0455 PM 06/29                        
1 NNE OVERTON (1260 FT)        119       0448 PM 06/29                        
1 W BOULDER CITY (2410 FT)     115       0440 PM 06/29                        
1 SSW BOULDER CITY (2442 FT)   114       0444 PM 06/29                        
3 SW BOULDER CITY (2201 FT)    113       0435 PM 06/29                        
2 WNW HOOVER DAM (1401 FT)     110       0454 PM 06/29                        
MEADVIEW ALERT (2987 FT)       110       0440 PM 06/29                        
UNION PASS RAWS (3590 FT)      109       0452 PM 06/29                        

...LAS VEGAS VALLEY...
2 ENE GREEN VALLEY (1745 FT)   119       0433 PM 06/29                        
2 ENE SLOAN (2501 FT)          119       0442 PM 06/29                        
3 ESE NWS LAS VEGAS (2196 FT)  118       0439 PM 06/29                        
2 E DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS         118       0439 PM 06/29                        
1 SW GREEN VALLEY (1998 FT)    118       0439 PM 06/29                        
2 N DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS         118       0434 PM 06/29                        
2 SW FRENCHMAN MTN (1756 FT)   118       0443 PM 06/29                        
SAM'S TOWN (1691 FT)           118       0443 PM 06/29                        
2 NW SAM'S TOWN (2029 FT)      118       0459 PM 06/29                        
2 WNW SAM'S TOWN (1848 FT)     117       0459 PM 06/29                        
2 ESE MOUNTAIN SPRINGS         117       0434 PM 06/29                        
3 NNE SAM'S TOWN (1742 FT)     117       0434 PM 06/29                        
1 N UNLV (2022 FT)             117       0459 PM 06/29                        
1 W GREEN VALLEY (1992 FT)     117       0444 PM 06/29                        
3 SSW NELLIS AFB (1792 FT)     117       0443 PM 06/29                        
1 NW HENDERSON (1684 FT)       117       0443 PM 06/29                        
3 E HENDERSON EXECUTIVE        117       0517 PM 06/29                        
3 ENE HENDERSON EXECUTIVE      116       0524 PM 06/29                        
2 NE SPRING VALLEY (2029 FT)   116       0439 PM 06/29                        
1 ENE UNLV (1960 FT)           116       0444 PM 06/29                        
3 WNW DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS       116       0454 PM 06/29                        
2 N HENDERSON EXECUTIVE        116       0442 PM 06/29                        
2 WNW THE STRIP (2219 FT)      116       0434 PM 06/29                        
2 E NWS LAS VEGAS (2029 FT)    116       0443 PM 06/29                        
3 N SAM'S TOWN (1730 FT)       116       0444 PM 06/29                        
1 ESE HENDERSON (1976 FT)      116       0459 PM 06/29                        
1 E HENDERSON EXECUTIVE        116       0434 PM 06/29                        
2 S GREEN VALLEY (2143 FT)     116       0444 PM 06/29                        
2 S GREEN VALLEY (2147 FT)     116       0454 PM 06/29                        
SAM'S TOWN (1689 FT)           116       0440 PM 06/29                        
2 ESE DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS       116       0443 PM 06/29                        
2 WNW HENDERSON (1835 FT)      116       0443 PM 06/29                        
1 SSW STRATOSPHERE TOWER       115       0454 PM 06/29                        
3 NE DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS        115       0444 PM 06/29                        
3 WNW FRENCHMAN MTN (1832 FT)  115       0459 PM 06/29                        
4 ENE DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS       115       0459 PM 06/29                        
2 WNW NELLIS AFB (2029 FT)     115       0444 PM 06/29                        
5 WNW DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS       115       0434 PM 06/29                        
2 WNW STRATOSPHERE TOWER       115       0444 PM 06/29                        
2 SW NELLIS AFB (1863 FT)      115       0451 PM 06/29                        
3 S NORTH LAS VEGAS (2088 FT)  115       0444 PM 06/29                        
2 WNW STRATOSPHERE TOWER       115       0444 PM 06/29                        
2 SSE GREEN VALLEY (2097 FT)   115       0444 PM 06/29                        
3 W DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS         115       0443 PM 06/29                        
5 NE LONE MTN (2619 FT)        115       0434 PM 06/29                        
2 E DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS         115       0459 PM 06/29                        
3 E DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS         115       0444 PM 06/29                        
3 WNW RAILROAD PASS (2261 FT)  115       0444 PM 06/29                        
1 W NORTH LAS VEGAS (2163 FT)  115       0454 PM 06/29                        
4 W DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS         115       0458 PM 06/29                        
2 N SLOAN (2622 FT)            115       0459 PM 06/29                        
3 ENE HENDERSON EXECUTIVE      115       0444 PM 06/29                        
3 SW NORTH LAS VEGAS (2029 FT) 115       0444 PM 06/29                        
3 ESE HENDERSON EXECUTIVE      115       0444 PM 06/29                        
4 NW NORTH LAS VEGAS (2303 FT) 115       0440 PM 06/29                        
2 NNE SLOAN (2460 FT)          115       0523 PM 06/29                                             
1 NW UNLV (2035 FT)            115       0440 PM 06/29                        
2 ESE SPRING VALLEY (2302 FT)  114       0434 PM 06/29                        
2 ENE DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS       114       0441 PM 06/29                        
3 N DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS         114       0459 PM 06/29                                                
2 E HENDERSON EXECUTIVE        114       0454 PM 06/29                        
4 SSW THE LAKES (2783 FT)      114       0459 PM 06/29                        
2 ENE DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS       114       0454 PM 06/29                        
4 ENE SUMMERLIN (2029 FT)      114       0449 PM 06/29                        
3 ENE THE LAKES (2324 FT)      114       0443 PM 06/29                        
1 NW DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS        114       0449 PM 06/29                        
1 ESE HENDERSON (2029 FT)      114       0459 PM 06/29                        
3 NNW SLOAN (2324 FT)          113       0458 PM 06/29                        
1 WNW STRATOSPHERE TOWER       113       0443 PM 06/29                        
5 WSW NWS LAS VEGAS (2731 FT)  113       0443 PM 06/29                        
1 SE LONE MTN (2619 FT)        113       0459 PM 06/29                                            
3 WNW STRATOSPHERE TOWER       113       0444 PM 06/29                        
2 ESE SUMMERLIN (2537 FT)      113       0459 PM 06/29                        
5 SW SPRING VALLEY (2601 FT)   113       0459 PM 06/29                        
3 ENE THE LAKES (2029 FT)      113       0454 PM 06/29                        
2 NW STRATOSPHERE TOWER        113       0443 PM 06/29                                             
4 ENE THE LAKES (2334 FT)      113       0444 PM 06/29                        
2 SE DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS        113       0458 PM 06/29                        
5 WSW NWS LAS VEGAS (2551 FT)  113       0443 PM 06/29                        
3 ENE THE LAKES (2029 FT)      113       0454 PM 06/29                        
2 NW NORTH LAS VEGAS (2029 FT) 113       0444 PM 06/29                                           
4 W NORTH LAS VEGAS (2309 FT)  113       0459 PM 06/29                        
1 S HENDERSON EXECUTIVE        113       0456 PM 06/29                        
5 NE LONE MTN (2449 FT)        112       0449 PM 06/29                        
2 NNE LONE MTN (2708 FT)       112       0454 PM 06/29                        
4 W NWS LAS VEGAS (2616 FT)    112       0459 PM 06/29                        
3 ENE SUMMERLIN (2409 FT)      112       0443 PM 06/29                        
1 S SUMMERLIN (2672 FT)        112       0459 PM 06/29                        
N VLY 1 ALERT (2641 FT)        112       0504 PM 06/29                        
2 ESE LONE MTN (2458 FT)       112       0454 PM 06/29                        
1 ENE SPRING VALLEY (2330 FT)  112       0449 PM 06/29                        
2 ESE SUMMERLIN (2029 FT)      112       0449 PM 06/29                        
1 W HENDERSON EXECUTIVE        112       0444 PM 06/29                        
6 N LONE MTN (2652 FT)         112       0444 PM 06/29                        
3 E SUMMERLIN (2409 FT)        111       0441 PM 06/29                        
2 ESE SUMMERLIN (2599 FT)      111       0443 PM 06/29                        
3 W BLACK MTN (2874 FT)        111       0452 PM 06/29                        
4 WNW DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS       111       0444 PM 06/29                        
4 WNW THE LAKES (3276 FT)      110       0449 PM 06/29                        
3 SW SUMMERLIN (3096 FT)       110       0449 PM 06/29                        
3 WSW THE LAKES (2937 FT)      109       0444 PM 06/29                        
2 WNW THE LAKES (2941 FT)      108       0444 PM 06/29                        
3 SW SUMMERLIN (3082 FT)       108       0444 PM 06/29                        
3 W THE LAKES (3084 FT)        107       0500 PM 06/29                        
RED ROCK RAWS (3756 FT)        107       0434 PM 06/29                        
3 ESE SPRING MOUNTAIN RANCH ST 107       0459 PM 06/29                        
6 NW SLOAN (4516 FT)           100       0451 PM 06/29                        
BLUE DIAMOND RIDGE S ALERT     100       0448 PM 06/29                        

...LINCOLN COUNTY...
IMMIGRATION WASH RAWS          97        0441 PM 06/29                        
BEAVER DAM STATE PARK ALERT    97        0500 PM 06/29                        
1 NNW ALAMO (3438 FT)          114       0508 PM 06/29                        
CALIENTE (4785 FT)             110       0519 PM 06/29                        
PANACA (4725 FT)               107       0519 PM 06/29                        
1 NW ALAMO (3450 FT)           107       0440 PM 06/29                        
KANE SPRINGS RAWS (4382 FT)    106       0441 PM 06/29                        
COYOTE WASH RAWS (5770 FT)     104       0442 PM 06/29                        
CALIENTE (4380 FT)             103       0450 PM 06/29                        
1 WNW RACHEL (4850 FT)         103       0440 PM 06/29                        
1 NNW PANACA (4738 FT)         103       0433 PM 06/29                        
5 W RACHEL (4810 FT)           101       0440 PM 06/29                        

...MORONGO BASIN...
2 ESE TWENTYNINE PALMS         114       0456 PM 06/29                        
2 S JOSHUA TREE (3399 FT)      112       0438 PM 06/29                                            
YUCCA VALLEY RAWS (3246 FT)    108       0456 PM 06/29                        
8 N YUCCA VALLEY (3412 FT)     108       0435 PM 06/29                        
2 ESE YUCCA VALLEY (3628 FT)   106       0449 PM 06/29                        

...NORTHEAST CLARK COUNTY...
1 ENE MOAPA (1570 FT)          120       0444 PM 06/29                        
14 SW MOAPA (2034 FT)          120       0440 PM 06/29                        
7 WNW MOAPA (1758 FT)          117       0439 PM 06/29                        
2 WSW BUNKERVILLE (1531 FT)    116       0449 PM 06/29                        
1 NNW MESQUITE (1594 FT)       116       0436 PM 06/29                        
MESQUITE AP ALERT (1967 FT)    113       0439 PM 06/29                        
2 NE MESQUITE (1760 FT)        111       0449 PM 06/29                        

...NORTHWEST DESERTS...
SR66 @ MP109 (5193 FT)         98        0449 PM 06/29                        
HUALAPAI MOUNTAIN (6493 FT)    90        0435 PM 06/29                                              
10 SSW YUCCA (1318 FT)         120       0501 PM 06/29                        
WIKIEUP ALERT (2024 FT)        115       0455 PM 06/29                        
1 SSW DOLAN SPRINGS (3328 FT)  108       0453 PM 06/29                        
MOHAVE COUNTY YARD (3418 FT)   108       0443 PM 06/29                        
VALLE VISTA ALERT (3121 FT)    103       0456 PM 06/29                        
NEW KINGMAN-BUTLER (3438 FT)   100       0506 PM 06/29                                             

...NORTHWEST PLATEAU...
28 WSW TUWEEP (6160 FT)        97        0450 PM 06/29                        
21 NNW MT. TRUMBULL (5445 FT)  95        0434 PM 06/29                        
NIXON FLATS RAWS (6500 FT)     91        0450 PM 06/29                        
BLACK ROCK RAWS (7080 FT)      91        0450 PM 06/29                        
MOUNT LOGAN RAWS (7605 FT)     88        0433 PM 06/29                        
BEAVER DAM ALERT (1922 FT)     116       0447 PM 06/29                        
OLAF KNOLLS (2900 FT)          113       0433 PM 06/29                        
23 ESE MESQUITE (5200 FT)      100       0433 PM 06/29                        

...OWENS VALLEY...
OWENS VALLEY RAWS (4650 FT)    106       0454 PM 06/29                        
INDEPENDENCE (3877 FT)         103       0444 PM 06/29                                           
5 S BISHOP (4416 FT)           101       0515 PM 06/29                        
1 WSW DIXON LANE-MEADOW        101       0449 PM 06/29                        

...SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY-UPPER COLORADO RIVER VALLEY...                    
3 SW PARKER DAM (459 FT)       118       0449 PM 06/29                        

...SOUTHERN CLARK COUNTY...
NELSON PEAK ALERT (4948 FT)    99        0451 PM 06/29                        
PRIMM (2642 FT)                114       0440 PM 06/29                        
1 SSE PRIMM (2786 FT)          114       0439 PM 06/29                        
JEAN SOUTHEAST 2 ALERT         109       0436 PM 06/29                        
4 NE PRIMM (2616 FT)           109       0440 PM 06/29                        
SEARCHLIGHT (3662 FT)          109       0434 PM 06/29                        

...SPRING MOUNTAINS-RED ROCK CANYON...
RAWS (5600 FT)                 96        0459 PM 06/29                        
KYLE CANYON (7200 FT)          90        0450 PM 06/29                        
2 SW MT. CHARLESTON (7682 FT)  89        0459 PM 06/29                        
1 ESE RED ROCK CANYON          105       0456 PM 06/29                        

...WESTERN CLARK AND SOUTHERN NYE COUNTY...
8 N DEATH VALLEY JUNCTION      115       0434 PM 06/29                        
9 NE DEATH VALLEY JUNCTION     115       0434 PM 06/29                        
6 W PAHRUMP (2540 FT)          114       0450 PM 06/29                        
5 NNW PAHRUMP (2601 FT)        113       0454 PM 06/29                        
1 NW SANDY VALLEY (2826 FT)    112       0443 PM 06/29                        
7 SE PAHRUMP (2737 FT)         112       0444 PM 06/29                        
6 SW AMARGOSA VALLEY (2424 FT) 111       0440 PM 06/29                        
1 NNW PAHRUMP (2640 FT)        111       0440 PM 06/29                        
2 SW PAHRUMP (2556 FT)         111       0449 PM 06/29                        
9 NNE MERCURY (3085 FT)        110       0445 PM 06/29                        
1 WSW INDIAN SPRINGS (3098 FT) 109       0518 PM 06/29                                          
3 SSW MERCURY (3309 FT)        108       0445 PM 06/29                        
4 SSW MERCURY (3310 FT)        108       0452 PM 06/29                        
13 NE LATHROP WELLS (3735 FT)  108       0445 PM 06/29                        
1 S MERCURY (3678 FT)          106       0445 PM 06/29                        
13 NW MERCURY (4190 FT)        104       0445 PM 06/29                        
9 NW MERCURY (4533 FT)         103       0445 PM 06/29                        

...WESTERN MOJAVE DESERT...
21 SSW SHOSHONE (198 FT)       121       0434 PM 06/29                        
3 E BARSTOW (2208 FT)          114       0503 PM 06/29                                           
3 ENE BARSTOW (2115 FT)        111       0454 PM 06/29                        
31 W BAKER (2349 FT)           109       0455 PM 06/29                        
SQUAW SPRINGS RAWS (3661 FT)   106       0451 PM 06/29