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I don't think the austerity part ever got started but the tax increases did. They are in the death spiral, European socialism does not work.
Thank you Thom for highlighting this important story and making the connection on RT News between Jeff Timmer, the Sterling Corporation and his decision about disallowing Michiganders a right to vote up or down Public Act #4.
ROJS News & Radio
Monica
Check out what is going on in Chantily, Virginia with the Bilderberg secret meeting of the world elites. Follow them and you will find the root of all evil. Look it up and follow the citizen media of what is really going on. The Bilderberg conference.
THis EU treaty is definitely NOT the way to go... being austere is not going to generate any jobs or stimulate the economy!! Music To Meditate To
While I voted yes, it's up for debate whether or not FL votes will be the deciding factor. I'm going to be on pins and needles all day come Nov 6.
The job numbers report just out indicates just how bad the problem of employers stealing from workers is. Sales are up, profits are up, productivity is up,....wages and employment are not....do the math! Thanks to the last republican economic crash employers are cashing in on a unionless and desperate workforce. Employee downsizing often without workload shrinkage forces one to do the work of two or three. Trickle- up economics on steroids!
The answer....... UNIONIZE, form COOPERATIVES, and fire the CEO's, so to speak!
Food stamps should be used for those who really need it. If money was spent properly in this country then it wouldn't be an issue. Reform in many areas need to happen because right now someone could sell their food stamp card and then claim that it was lost so that they can get a new one.
Republicans get blamed for everything when they only want to try to prevent people from committing fraud online on the taxpayers dime, but even they commit it on some level.
The county hospital I work for in texas did not pay time and a half for overtime to RN's for more than 10 years, until about 2005. They also edited the time sheets so that if we stayed less than 1 hour over we were paid nothing at all. But like almost all nurses we were rarely able to leave on time. Now that the hospital is in trouble with Medicare we are told that we may not receive our pension which we paid into instead of Social Security. The ceo is a big man in the baptist church. If you haven't read Jeff Sharlet's "The Family" you should (teabrains excepted of course).
This is nothing new. I worked for a company from 1980 to about 1992, the last four years working 55-60 and even 70 hours a week and only being paid for 40. I was in the lowest classification for the jobs I was doing, and always received an "adequate" review because an accurate review would have meant a better raise. During this time I went from $6.25 to about $8.00 per hour, always in the lowest 10% for each job. When I asked my boss whether I qualified for overtime, he stood up and screamed in my face that if I , wanted overtime, he was going to knock me back to $5.00 an hour. I had no time to search for a better job and was so beaten down that I couldn't sell myself to another employer.
When they put me in the Human Resources position (duh) I found out the truth. I had been eligible for overtime for the entire four years - if you calculated it at 55 hours per week (which was conservative) I was effectively earning less than minimum wage. They owed me for at least 2000 hours of overtime. I had so little money that I couldn't even afford to call a lawyer; I caved and accepted some extra vacation time and a change in my job classification.
I finally blew the whistle after inheriting some money because, predictably, they immediately started treating me like shit. I was glad to go, but not everybody has the opportunity to start a new life like I did. At least they stopped lying to the people who followed me in those jobs, but they did have to replace me with two people each time because nobody could do it all in 40 hours. The person who followed me couldn't handle the whole job, so they got him an assistant. And ironically, he got a raise because he was now a supervisor.
Wage theft among bottom-wage labor has been common for years, and America didn't consider it worth raising a fuss about. Why not let the middle class benefit from the same opportunities?
Richard, with all due respect, are you aware that the majority of America's poor are white? Or that women, regardless of color, make up the great majority of the poorest? How about that the rural poor especially suffer conditions of deprivation and hopelessness? This isn't the 1960s. Did you know that the poor (regardless of race) do NOT have the same legal rights as the middle class? Or that it was the middle class and rich of all races and both primary political parties that took an ax to the proverbial ladder out of poverty? One could consider this "class war." I don't know the current birth rate statistics by race or class, only that since we enacted our successful and popular welfare reform, infant mortality rates among America's poor now surpasses that of some Third World countries -- but we're all OK with that. We can talk about race, but not about class. The realities of US poverty has been censored out of the public discussion, eliminated from the political discussion, erased from the media.
Companies like "Lincoln Heritage" have the nerve to advertise on television, "Trillions of investment dollars have been lost and people have lost their retirement benefits....so finish your life with a reverse mortgage."
Trillions of investment dollars have not been lost, even Romney knows that and is vain enough to admit it publicly.
Every loser device we have witnessed since 1970, which has perpetuated losses to the common stockholder, is culminating in the ultimate scheme to end individual property ownership.
Since Lincoln Financial Advisors are filthy rich, the loss of pensions countrywide should be attributed to the Tyrant which has manipulated commerce to that effect.
A reverse mortgage devalues a property by more than 50% and guarantees homestead property will be lost to direct descendants.
Between the mortgage crisis, and the mysterious lost public trillions, and skyrocketing everyday expenses, under these constant threats to our security, what is left of the middle class is being terrorized into forfeiting what they and their forefathers have worked for, sometimes for generations.
Individual property ownership is no longer in the plan for U.S. citizens. This should make us wonder, who is making this plan? No friends of mine are involved.
I think this is the expected response to a windfall - Except for the very dumbest executives, they all know that the current "low tax" bonanza will not last forever - thus we better get ours now. The bad news is that they are wringing every penny out of corporations for themselves at the expense of workers (and R&D, and corporate infrastructure). The good news is that as soon as we raise taxes on these guys to a reasonable level (66% over 1 million), they will stop sucking out obscene amounts for themselves and go back to business as usual. Since the money cannot be pocketed, they will invest in the company's future - which means jobs, etc.
Unless of course, we allow this to go on too long and they become so addicted that they resort to other destructive ways to enrich themselves. It may of course already be too late.
Tell me somthin' i don't know! 30 years as a working class stiff, 4 professions several employers and of all of them I only worked for one that had one iota of ethic. They squeeze the golden egz out anyway they can! and when they can't squeeze anymore? ...send you to the un employment line or make some stupid excuse to keep you at the pay grade your at. So much for trickle down huh? Meanwhile? THey still take "their" 3 trips to europe each year, lease a new car every 3 years, buy up short sales to diversify their wealth and then turn around a cheat on the tax return!!!!
Hey tell me what i missed. i must have been taught something different!lol
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9321
Maybe there is some hope.
In a few short years whites will be a minority in this country. I believe I recently heard that already there are more African-American babies being born than white babies. I happen to think this is a good thing, of course, and something that will be the catalyst for the social change that we desparelty need.
But there's a poetic justice underscoring that change, that is to say the change of white people becoming a minority. They have with stone-cold hearts, hard as steel, imposed a racist and radical agenda of inequality that will lead to the very thing they wish with all their being to prevent; more progressives coming to power.
We know that empowered and educated women have less babies. I beleive their campaign of inequality is the very thing that will bring them down. Minority women are having far more babies because of the rift in education and opportunities for minority people, and white privilege will slowly but surely diminish as the demographic landscape shifts.
I only pray this change happens sooner rather than later.
i used to work at a local newspaper as a collector. i went to dozens of convenience stores to collect bills every day. as i stood at the counter waiting to talk to the clerk, i couldn't help but notice how many people would come in (especially kids) and drop $10 for all kinds of chips and soda and other assorted crap that we americans seem to think is food. people on public aid would be loaded down with chips and bottles of soda.
i continue to wonder where the kids got all that money, but certainly don't wonder anymore about how so many people get so fat. there is no real food in a convenience store, but that's where today's kids get their "nourishment".
sad
On the HFCS topic, over the years I have become a "small" and sometimes a "petite" when I used to be a "medium" but my height, waist, and weight has stayed the same. Some call it vanity sizing but I call it fat sizing.
Eddie Bauer "fat-sized" their clothes about a year ago - making my "mediums" hang on me like I am wearing my dad's clothes.
Even worse is that the Boy Scouts uniform suppliers did that about 5 years ago to their shirts, shorts, and pants. A few weeks ago I noticed that their sleeping bags now have "wide" option!
Hey, how about a new Nutrition Merit Badge!
Dan D.
No, sugar and HF corn syrup should not be regulated. They are vital to the financial continuity of Social Security and Medicare. People who die young won't use up valuable resources. Its part of the publicans die quick & die young HEW policies.
Pete
But MSNBC refers to itself as "The Place for Politics" and does not have the word "News" in its name (MSNBC = MicroSoft/National Broadcasting Company). And Dylan Ratigan is not a Progressive; he considers himself a libertarian.
Many talk show hosts on radio say that they don't want to pay for poor people, and why should THEIR taxes go to pay for others to have health care, or education. This word has spread like wildfire. So what then? The rich peoples' taxes only go for what they want ? Or maybe they all live in a separate land? Do they want a fire department or police, or will they hire their own? Will they cry to be rescued by the Coast Guard if they are on their boat? Will they want help after an earthquake, or hurricaine? Maybe not, they have so much $$$ that they can just go elsewhere. Will they mind if people around them are sick, like waiters, and maids, clerks?
I try to watch Bully O'Reilly to see what he is up to. He won't let people talk and he points his bullying finger and cuts them off. It is NOT fair and balanced, but so many people do NOT know this.
There are two kinds of people in the U.S. for certain political economic purposes, those who are the owners of businesses and those who work for somebody else - Capital and Labor, more classically. The owners of businesses have succeeded in making their priorities - tax cuts, dereguation, etc. - dominate the national conversation. Their political representatives say things like, "We're gonna help the working people by letting them keep more of their own money.". That, of course, is ignoring the fact that working people don't have any money that doesn't come from the owners of businesses, or their employers.
David Cay Johnstone, lefty tax analyst, once described the dishonest use of language in messaging when Republicans, business people and whoever else, say things like, "The workers of _ will, heretofore, have to pay more of their own pension benefit" or "more of their own health care insurance" characterizing those benefits as some sort of charitable generosity on the part of the employers rather than what they are, the just, negotiated and agreed upon compensation by the workers owed to them by their employers. As Johnstone points out, to say that the workers will, from now on, have to "pay more of their own pension benefit" or "more of their own health insurance" is like saying that "from now on the workers will have to pay more of their own wages or salaries". That may seem to make logical sense if you are an owner of business as owners of busineses do, in fact, pay their own salaries but it doesn't fit at all when you apply it to working people.
In our political economy the owners of businesses owe those who work for them, that is, realistically, everybody else in society, a just compensation. That compensation comes in two forms, wages or salaries and other direct compansations and less direct compensation in the form of taxes. If the owners of businesses refuse to do either, as they are now, you have, then, a situation as we have now in which the middle class is destroyed and the working people are pauperized.
When I was in Madison, Wi. last spring there were many slogans being displayed on more or less makeshift signs and banners. One of my favorite ones was, "A benefit cut is a tax". So, these days, when I stand and hold a banner with Occupy Chicago in our financial district, I like to hold one that reads, "A program cut is a tax on the 99% and welfare [or free labor] for the 1%". We have to stop allowing schools, hospitals, libraries, food stamps, etc. from being characterized as charitable generosities of the 1% toward the 99%. They are, in fact, the just compensation owed the 99% by the 1% that the 99% are justly entitled to.
The Occupy movement has been accused of wanting" "free stuff" as their main platform. I liked the Diggers' (the Hippie Free Food and Free Store services in Haight Ashbury in the '60s) slogan of, "It's free because it's yours". In negation of private property rights they declared that they were giving you things for free because they are already rightfully yours. It was justice not charity. Similarly, the Occupy movement is demanding what is already rightfully ours and not a charitable donation. They are demanding what the hardworking people of our society rightly deserve.
The hippies are, in fact, an important part of the Occupy movement but only a part. The Occupy movement is like a Charlie Daniels song, it's the cowboys and the hippies and the rebels and the yanks all got together again. The current political climate is really more the Great Depression all over again than it is the 60's all over again.
Another anagram pops-up.
Seraph phrase Mitt clangs murders A sepia Holiday A sepia Holiday
As always, take any issues up with the author of that old book. See the Seraph blog for source details.
last year when I started collecting recall signatures in Waukesha, Brookfield, and other places in southeastern Wisconsin. This election will tell a lot about money vs. a determined, hard-working group of volunteers. Buy an essay | Essay help online | Write my essay for me | Essay writing services
We have too many dead beat dads and too many households where women are the sole breadwinners; women who make 70% of what men do thanks to a deplorable inequity in wages.