BTW I'd also take the system in Mexico over our system any day. My brother-in-law was a victim of their unregulated fireworks on a visit. He was seen and treated minutes after his injury with no complications by a free neighborhood clinic. He was back on his feet the next day. In addition, I've met several Seniors from the USA who have formed communities in Mexico partially as a result of their Medical system. Even Mexico blows us away in Medical care. How does that make you feel Kend!

With all due respect Kend, if you haven't been here and used the system you can't really judge. For someone who pays through his taxes as opposed to someone who pays through their pocket, you'd think you'd get more bang for your buck and not less. I'll take you're Canadian system over our private system any day!

Dannemarc there is bad doctors everywhere and I hate to break the bad news to you but Government health care isn't any better. I have some great stories and some bad ones as well. Just think your congress running your health care system. They can't pass a budget. That's what we have running our health care system in Canada. government doesn't do anything well do they? Government or insurance companies, we are all hooped

Yes Old Blue their are may "abusers" of the system who make it hard on us all. Fortunately for me I'm not. I worked for a small company and never abused sick time. When I had my hernia my Boss was happy to help out in every way he could despite the hospitals assessment. I was very fortunate.

However, like you said I can see the problem of "abusers" form an employers POV. However, for the good of all their employees, and above all, for the good of all their customers, employers have to exercise a little common sense when dishing out sick leave. If someone gets sick say 20 times a year, have a talk with them. 1-4 times a year is acceptable, maybe more if they have kids.

Also, lets look at workers with kids. Let's face it, Kids are germ magnets. If kids are forced to go to school sick because their is no one at home to take care of them, then other kids and other parents are going to get sick to. If you are going to look at the problem from a CDC POV, the first place you should screwtinized is the schools.

I worked for "The Man" in one form or another (from the federal government to small startups) for many years and always had paid sick leave. Of course, I was an "exempt" employee most of those years, which meant that I was "exempt" from overtime pay on those frequent occasions when I was required to put in 50 or 60 hours per week. There was this thing called "comp time" that never seemed redeemable. One thing that was a constant across every job I had, though, was that management didn't like it when a worker called in sick. This was felt in numerous ways, but the effect was predictable. People would show up during the flu season coughing, sneezing, running fevers, because they were reluctant to be one of those "abusers". Of course the pressure is even greater on the minimum wage worker at a restaurant chain because the pay is so lousy that they probably can't make ends meet without getting in a full week, if then, and they aren't paid if they aren't on the job (infecting their co-workers and patrons). Kend mentions that workers and companies are less loyal to each other these days. It's probably a "chicken-egg" thing, but my money is on employers as the root cause of the problem. There are plenty of examples of "people centric" companies that have been abundantly rewarded by their employees for being treated decently. Hershey Chocolate and Hewlett Packard come to mind. American Enterprise is generally a cruel task master.

I agree Thom!

Forcing a person to work or forfeit a day's wages is a threat to National Security. If you ask me sick leave should fall under workman's comp insurance as a CDC decree. Use our opulent Defense Fund to pay for it!

While you're at it, lets discourage shaking hands as a way to great people for the same National Security reason. The American Indians would raise their hand with their palms facing the other person and say "How." Sounds a lot more sanitary to me.

My father was a mail carrier for 27 years starting in 1937. During WWII they used to come to the house and check if my dad was really sick.

I was a federal employee for 32 years. It does not pay to abuse sick leave. When I retired, I had 2650 hours of sick leave accumulated. When I retired, they applied the sick leave toward my years of service. I received another year of service for all this sick leave which increased my retirement substantially. I have been retired now for 23 years. It pays not to abuse sick leave.

There's a question I wanted to ask Senator Sanders, but I couldn't get to the phone in time to hear anything but a busy signal.

It's a difficult question to ask briefly, and while I would like legislation to this effect, I'm really talking about a broad cultural phenomenon which I would like to see and end of, so this forum works better anyway. First, what I would have asked on the air, in briefest possible form: "Senator Sanders, would you introduce legislation to close the unofficial 'incompetence' loophole that has allowed those responsible for destorying half the value on the Dow Jones in 2008, and those responsible for invading Iraq based on false representations of fact, to evade accountability"? Now, to put this question in context, and present my case for such a law.

When a physician harms instead of helping a patient, it is called malpractice and the resulting lawsuit often puts the guilty doctor out of business regardless of whether they were malicious or "just" incompetent. I think this principle should be applied more widely, especially to work that has global ramifications. I think that accepting a paycheck always constitutes a de facto representation of some competence in the field of work for which one is getting paid, and that therefore incompetence is never a defense. When you're being paid to do a job, you're being paid to do it right not to "just do your best" like you're a five-year-old. If you can't do it right, you have no right to any payment for work you're only capable of screwing up. If the people in charge of AIG, Citi, et al, crippled our economy out of incompetence rather than intent, then they are still guilty of fraudulently representating their own competence when undertaking the roles that put them in charge of those institutions, in positions that their incompetence cost trillions of other people's dollars. What matters is not whether their intent was to deprive GM workers who showed up on time every day for decades of their pensions. What matters is that that damage was done, and irresponsibility and incompetence on Wall Street did that damage.

Similarly, widespread acceptance of the narrative that the fallacious WMD in Iraq were products of "faulty intel" (egregious incompetence) rather than (wilfully) falsified intel seems to have been the reason that invasion has not been punished as a crime against humanity. Bush, et al effectively submitted a plea of incompetence to the court of public opinion, and the American public rather willingly accepted it and exonerated them. But to hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis as well as a couple thousand of our own soldiers who died, literally for nothing, it makes absolutely no difference whether they were killed because Bush and his boys are incompetent, or whether they were killed because Bush and his boys concocted a nefarious plot to invade Iraq for oil.

They're dead.

They shouldn't be.

Incompetence is not a valid defense. "It was just a mistake" is a meaningless remark which does nothing to lessen the damage done, nor the recklessness of undertaking responsibilities one is not competent to perform properly. None of us would accept incompetence as an excuse from a physician who injures us, or who harms or kills somebody we love. It is also immoral to accept incompetence as an excuse for disastrous policies that affect millions of people. Those responsible knew when they accepted their jobs that their decisions would affect millions of people. And if they weren't competent to do those jobs right, they knew that, too, but they took the jobs anyway, for the money, the power and the prestige, not any spirit of public service. If they screwed up because they're incompetent, that does not make them innocent. If they screwed up because they're incompetent, then when they took their jobs they knew they weren't competent to do those jobs, and they knew they were putting millions of innocent people at grave risk, and that makes them morally culpable. We must stop letting them off the hook legally.

As I understand criminal law, it may not actually be possible to take intent out of the equation in criminal cases. But in civil law, at least where it concerns financial liability of financial professionals, they are paid so much on the premise that they know what they're doing that incompetence should never be considered a relevant defense, nor even a mitigating factor. When the financial systems of the developed world were thrown into chaos by a few people who are paid millions of dollars to know just one subject, finance, we needn't have fussed about whether they intended to do so before we deprived them of their income. The results clearly show that they were never worthy of their salaries, much less any bonuses, even if they "didn't mean to do it." That's a five-year-old excuse, but it worked! What a world.

The more you're paid, the more that expertise is what you're being paid for, and the less anybody should ever excuse you for fouling up.

I think in addition to training on how to USE guns an additional REQUIREMENT should be HOW TO STORE them. THE best ways to keep them out of the hands of children and people like Lanza. If they are locked up and/or the ammunition is locked up, it would help to deter. imho

Everywhere I ever worked they gave you paid sick days. I give all my workers paid sick days and always have. Who wants a sick person in the work place. What is amazing is every seems to be sick on Fridays. Kind of weird eh. The fact is workers are not as loyal to the companies they work for anymore and the companies could care less about the employees. No one gives more than the have to on either side. Kinda sad.

Reply to DAnneMarc #37,38, and 39:

A terrific series of comments !!

I have had a great fear of voting on-line because of what I read about the security of Diebold machines; - and, although I don't understand computer jargon, your explanation of the solution to the security problem in human terms was excellent and, for me, convincing. However, I still believe that voting on-line is a risk we should not take because voting on-line is unnecessary.

But I never considered the possibility of lawmaking on-line; - that is a GREAT idea !!!

I alse believe that it is necessary. Why? Because the overwhelming support of low top marginal estate and capital gains rates by both Democrat and Republican lawmakers, against the wishes of most Americans as measured by polling, is conclusive proof that the money of the ultra-rich controls our Congress; - and that sustaining oligarchy in America is their goal.

Maybe we can reform our existing representative plutocracy by using on-line lawmaking to mandate entirely public financing of lawmakers' campaigns and retirements.