OWS

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rstrong
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Re: OWS

Unread post by rstrong »

Last month, when Congress passed a 1,603-page spending bill, it snuck in a provision that further protects dark money in politics. It prohibits the President from using his executive authority to force companies and unions with federal contracts to disclose their political contributions. The provision was buried in the last few pages of the bill along with another measure that increases the individual contribution limits in elections.
I have to wonder whether the provision actually spelled that out.

When the Patriot Act was passed, the problem wasn't just that no-one was allowed time to read it before voting on it. It's that - and this is routine - little of what it actually did was contained within its pages. Instead if was full of vague edits to a vast number of OTHER laws. "In law A, section B, subsection D, paragraph E, change "the police may not" to "the police may." "In law F, section G, subsection H, paragraph I, change "not allowed" to "allowed." And so a long list of **other** laws would also have to be read and the effects of changes to them considered.

Which is why Congressman Jim McDermott said on camera that no Senator read the Patriot act bill and John Conyers, Jr. said, "We don't read most of the bills. Do you really know what that would entail if we read every bill that we passed?

Now add Congress's tradition of adding on riders, amendments and pork AFTER hearings on a bill are over.

For example, artists could reclaim the copyrights on their work after 35 years. So an RIAA owned and operated Congressional aide named Mitch Glazier added a "technical amendment" to a bill that redefined recorded music as "works for hire". No more reclaimed rights after 35 years. The amendment was added to an unrelated bill, after all the hearings on the bill were over. By the time artists found out about the change, it was too late. (Eventually the issue led to the formation of the Recording Artists' Coalition, which successfully lobbied for repeal of the change.) (Glazier is now the senior executive vice president of the RIAA.)

They're why NASA's budget is drained by half a billion dollars a year for pork projects from regional fisheries centers in Massachusetts and Alaska, to Natural History and Underground Adventures museums.

The fact that this dark money clause was tacked onto a spending bill indicates that it was not meant to be noticed, or if noticed, not something that that people would be willing to stop an important bit of legislation (and OTHER tacked on legislation) over.

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Wneglia
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Re: OWS

Unread post by Wneglia »


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Wneglia
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Re: OWS

Unread post by Wneglia »

Am I interpreting the People's Budget correctly advocating a minimum wage of $69K per year? Link

:mrgreen:

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O Really
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Re: OWS

Unread post by O Really »

Vrede wrote:I'm pretty sure not.
... By raising the minimum wage, passing the Employee Free Choice Act, ending state-based right-to-work, and updating overtime regulations to raise the income threshold to $69,000, we can help workers help themselves....
It looks like that's specific to the income threshold for overtime regulations, whatever that means. O Really?
The criteria for being "exempt" from the FLSA requirement for time and a half over 40 hours in a week include a "duties" requirement (meaning you have to have a job such as a manager, for example, be paid on a salaried basis, and the minimum salary be at least - currently - $455/week or $23,660/year)
That is a low threshhold, since decent admin assistants get over $30K. And it was last changed in 2004 - before then way back. In fact, before the 2004 changes, the exempt "minimum" ($150/week) was actually lower than the 2004 minimum wage.

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O Really
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Re: OWS

Unread post by O Really »

Vrede wrote:Thanks. It seems very reasonable to raise the income threshold for overtime. I don't know enough to say whether $69K per year is the perfect number but overall I support the People’s Budget.

Now, about a minimum wage of $69K per year, maybe Wneglia has a point. ;)
$50K would be a more realistic number. What you want to consider "exempt" are people with actual authority, some role in running a part of the company, and in many instances management of people. That is, middle management and up. What you want to keep "non-exempt" (getting overtime) are people with no control over their work, even if they are called "supervisors." A lot of the litigation in recent years is over jobs like "assistant manager" in retail stores and restaurants, where the person "supervises" several people, but all they really do is check time cards and say "keep working," while doing essentially the same work as those they "supervise." So in most areas of the country, "middle management" is going to make $50K and up, though there are quite a few industries and places where middle management might start at $40K. But certainly not at the $23,660 currently in place.

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O Really
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Re: OWS

Unread post by O Really »

Vrede wrote:It sucks to not get OT when making only $23,660. Figuring a 40 hour week, 2000 hour year, that's $11.83/hour. It wouldn't take much unpaid OT to drive the real wage under $10/hour.

Not that it matters, a People’s Budget wouldn't pass even in a Dem Congress. :(
Yes, but from a practical standpoint, not many people at the $23,660 level have jobs that the duties would qualify them for exemption, so the real-life level is higher, again making the "exemption minimum" moot except in cases of the restaurant "assistant managers" and similar low-level jobs. It wouldn't be hard to come up with a realistic and practical figure. There's lots of data on average earnings by job and geographical area. Just take an overall average or median of all jobs legitimately considered "management" or "professional" and then drop about 20% off that figure for the new exemption minimum. It's not rocked surgery.

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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

Unread post by Vrede too »

Income Inequality Is Costing the U.S. on Social Issues

Thirty-five years ago, the United States ranked 13th among the 34 industrialized nations that are today in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in terms of life expectancy for newborn girls. These days, it ranks 29th.

In 1980, the infant mortality rate in the United States was about the same as in Germany. Today, American babies die at almost twice the rate of German babies.

“On nearly all indicators of mortality, survival and life expectancy, the United States ranks at or near the bottom among high-income countries,” says a report on the nation’s health by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine....

The United States has the highest teenage birthrate in the developed world — about seven times the rate in France, according to the O.E.C.D. More than one out of every four children lives with one parent, the largest percentage by far among industrialized nations. And more than a fifth live in poverty, sixth from the bottom among O.E.C.D. nations.

Among adults, seven out of every 1,000 are in prison, more than five times the rate of incarceration in most other rich democracies and more than three times the rate for the United States four decades ago....

American babies born to white, college-educated, married women survive as often as those born to advantaged women in Europe. It’s the babies born to nonwhite, nonmarried, nonprosperous women who die so young.

Three or four decades ago, the United States was the most prosperous country on earth. It had the mightiest military and the most advanced technologies known to humanity. Today, it’s still the richest, strongest and most inventive. But when it comes to the health, well-being and shared prosperity of its people, the United States has fallen far behind.

Pick almost any measure of social health and cohesion over the last four decades or so, and you will find that the United States took a wrong turn along the way....

What set the United States apart — what made the damage inflicted upon American society so intense — was the nature of its response. Government support for Americans in the bottom half turned out to be too meager to hold society together.

The conservative narrative of America’s social downfall, articulated by the likes of Charles Murray from the American Enterprise Institute, posits that a large welfare state, built from the time of the New Deal in the 1930s through the era of the Great Society in the 1960s, sapped Americans’ industriousness and undermined their moral fiber.

A more compelling explanation is that when globalization struck at the jobs on which 20th-century America had built its middle class, the United States discovered that it did not, in fact, have much of a welfare state to speak of. The threadbare safety net tore under the strain.

Call it a failure of solidarity. American institutions, built from hostility toward collective solutions, couldn’t hold society together when the economic underpinning of full employment at a decent wage gave in.

... Sean Reardon from Stanford University notes that the achievement gap between rich and poor children seems to have been steadily expanding for the last 50 years....
:cry: :cussing:
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Colonel Taylor
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Re: OWS

Unread post by Colonel Taylor »

Couldn't imagine why these folks have such a hard time getting a real job to make themselves self sufficient. :wtf: :crazy: :roll:


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O Really
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Re: OWS

Unread post by O Really »

Being crude in a demonstration doesn't mean they're unemployed or not self-sufficient, does it? Where did you get the idea they weren't employed?

Mr.B
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Re: OWS

Unread post by Mr.B »

O Really wrote:"Being crude in a demonstration doesn't mean they're unemployed or not self-sufficient, does it? Where did you get the idea they weren't employed?"
Because you have to have a brain to be employed would be my guess.

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GoCubsGo
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Re: OWS

Unread post by GoCubsGo »

Once again, Kernel Numb Nuts showing off his razor sharp intellect. I guess all cops are murderers because six in Baltimore could be.
:?:
Eamus Catuli~AC 000000 000101 010202 020303 010304 020405....Ahhhh, forget it, it's gonna be a while.

Mr.B
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Re: OWS

Unread post by Mr.B »

GoCubsGo wrote: "Once again, Kernel Numb Nuts showing off his razor sharp intellect. I guess all cops are murderers because six in Baltimore could be." :?:
Research much? It appears that the Colonel is not the numb nuts here; your "razor sharp intellect" is the one lacking.

Those are not photos of the Baltimore protests; rather they are OWS protests.


http://k003.kiwi6.com/hotlink/k0i9qr67u ... patrol-car[/u][/b].jpg


http://k003.kiwi6.com/hotlink/ijksl9yv0 ... _flag_poop[/u][/b]-291x3001.jpg

An apology maybe...?

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GoCubsGo
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Re: OWS

Unread post by GoCubsGo »

Uhhh, no. I was referencing O Really's post about not pigeonholing "all protesters" the same way as "all cops". Sorry if that was too tough for you to follow, next time I'll use the quote function.
Eamus Catuli~AC 000000 000101 010202 020303 010304 020405....Ahhhh, forget it, it's gonna be a while.

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O Really
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Re: OWS

Unread post by O Really »

GoCubsGo wrote:Uhhh, no. I was referencing O Really's post about not pigeonholing "all protesters" the same way as "all cops". Sorry if that was too tough for you to follow, next time I'll use the quote function.
Yeah, the Colonel sees a pic of some guys doing something crude and stupid and jumps to a conclusion not only that they don't have a job, but couldn't get one. Of course, this is the guy who went on for weeks denying the Obama pimp pic was anything other than people dressed nicely for a night out. :lol:

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Colonel Taylor
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Re: OWS

Unread post by Colonel Taylor »

You obviously have never been to an OWS event. I have and they are the filthiest group of vermin I have ever come across. We went for pure entertainment of course.
Yeah I've put hundreds of folk to work from old men to young entry level kids and I wouldn't hire one of these low life's with your money. Takes a real classy person to sh*t on a police car in public no less. :crazy:

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Last edited by Colonel Taylor on Wed May 06, 2015 2:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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GoCubsGo
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Re: OWS

Unread post by GoCubsGo »

I'm still trying to figure out why the Kernel felt the need to post a 3+ year old pic out of nowhere. Is it like Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day or an acid flashback? -0-?
Eamus Catuli~AC 000000 000101 010202 020303 010304 020405....Ahhhh, forget it, it's gonna be a while.

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GoCubsGo
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Re: OWS

Unread post by GoCubsGo »

Colonel Taylor wrote:You obviously have never been to an OWS event. I have and they are the filthiest group of vermin I have ever come across. We went for pure entertainment of course.
Yeah I've put hundreds of folk to work from old men to young entry level kids and I wouldn't hire one of these low life's with your money. Takes a real classy person to sh*t on a police car in public no less. :crazy:

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Yeah, there were protests on Church Street in Hendersonville on consecutive Saturday's, felt like I had to run for my life. :-H
Eamus Catuli~AC 000000 000101 010202 020303 010304 020405....Ahhhh, forget it, it's gonna be a while.

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O Really
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Re: OWS

Unread post by O Really »

I saw one in Philly back not long after the OWS demonstrations got started - about three years ago, I think. It was nothing like the Colonel's pics or his personal experience. :roll:

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GoCubsGo
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Re: OWS

Unread post by GoCubsGo »

O Really wrote:I saw one in Philly back not long after the OWS demonstrations got started - about three years ago, I think. It was nothing like the Colonel's pics or his personal experience. :roll:

Same in Chicago. Here's how to protest!

http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/v ... .yahoo.com
Eamus Catuli~AC 000000 000101 010202 020303 010304 020405....Ahhhh, forget it, it's gonna be a while.

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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

Unread post by Vrede too »

O Really wrote:... Of course, this is the guy who went on for weeks denying the Obama pimp pic was anything other than people dressed nicely for a night out. :lol:
Months, probably over a year despite having its intent proven to him by citing the pic's creator. The poor thing has no personal responsibility or balls.
GoCubsGo wrote:I'm still trying to figure out why the Kernel felt the need to post a 3+ year old pic out of nowhere. Is it like Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day or an acid flashback? -0-?
Because it's the same pic he was posting 3+ years ago. Under "broken record" in the dictionary one will find "Syn. Kernel Failure".
GoCubsGo wrote:
Colonel Taylor wrote:... sh*t on a police car in public no less. :crazy: ...
Of course, Kernel Failure has no idea whether that was truly an Occupy protestor or whether it was one of the possibly mentally ill street people that became Occupy hangers on because it was a reasonably safe space from cops and other street people. Similarly, his first pic is almost certainly taken after a police raid where the occupiers were not allowed to collect their things and clean up, and his second pic looks to be merely some scrap cardboard near a sign making station, hardly filth. This is how chronically and hopelessly gullible, foolish and whiny Kernel Failure is.

Though I never joined in with Occupy I did visit a handful of camps. Litter free with information booths, sanitation, kitchens and first aid were what I saw. Kernel Failure's description, as usual, has no relation to reality.
GoCubsGo wrote:... Here's how to protest!

Image
That's what happens when they let Kernel Failure near the sign making station.
Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
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1312. ETTD.

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