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POPSLower costs with more administration I have owned, ran and worked for a number of small, and a couple large, businesses in my career. I can honestly think of NO instance where hiring thousands of people, especially unionized, paid-for-life government workers, could lower costs for anyone. Even at 1900+ pages, it doesn't cover HALF the uninsured. This is success? Wake up people before 20% of your wages are stolen for shoddy "care."
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POPSTwo Common Objections to Capitalism The system of voluntary exchange and experimentation based on secure private-property rights — what we loosely call "capitalism" — expands rather than restricts our material and nonmaterial opportunities. Substituting elite power for voluntary exchange invites all sorts of epistemological problems and moral disasters. For these reasons, capitalism deserves to be defended.
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POPS Ford Beats Government Motors AP story: "Ford Reports Surprise $1 Billion Profit. Automaker now expects to be solidly profitable in 2011." But then you get halfway down the story: "But Ford still faces obstacles in its turnaround. Last week workers overwhelmingly rejected an agreement with the United Auto Workers that would have brought Ford's labor costs in line with rivals General Motors and Chrysler. Workers objected to clauses limiting their right to strike and freezing entry-level wages and felt the company was healthy enough and didn't need further concessions." So this headline, "Ford Reports Surprise $1 Billion Profit" needs to be rewritten: "Ford Surprises by Having a Profit. Angry unions vow to redouble efforts to sink the automaker."
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POPSThe First 500 Pages of Obamacare
• Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens • Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan. • Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter. • Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No "judicial review" is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed. • Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages. • Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives. • Page 126: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families. • Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll • Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option,
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POPSBarack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
This news, announce today, appears to have surprised almost everyone. But what is no surprise is that if you are on the side on warmongers, neocons, racist, those who ok torture, corporate exploitation of people and the land than you want to destroy this president. If you have hopes for peace, progress in alternative energies and new directions, national health care, unions and decent wages than this is the man who is on the frontlines fighting for these things. Closing down the suicidal plans for putting nuke missiles on the border with Poland was one clear change that we can see -- because it meant direct European and USA military conflict with Russia. This fact maybe lost in the madness of 24-hour news but it was 4sure. That dangerous and unnecessary Bush Era program is ended...and Obama gets attacked at home by the warmongers for "backing down to Russia." Like the Nobel Committee said....we see he is for real, we see he is trying, and we add our hopes to his and encour
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POPSBMW to Cap Executive Pay - wundervoll! Now let me get this straight. GM, Ford, and Chrysler have all lost market share in the US and complain that worker wages and benefits made them uncompetitive. Germans assembly line workers average $60,000 a year and BMW sales have not plummeted as US car makers have. And now, BMW says they are capping executive pay by establishing the current ration of difference 25-1 as THE ratio. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average U.S. worker earned $29,544. The ratio of CEO pay to average pay is 364:1 and to minimum wage is 885:1. So... Why is it that US car companies have trouble competing?
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POPS"I, Too, Am in Favour of Abolishing Large Cities" More from Einstein: My personal opinion is that those methods are in general preferable which respect existing traditions and habits so far as that is in any way compatible with the end in view. Nor do I believe that a sudden transference of economy into government management would be beneficial from the point of view of production; private enterprise should be left its sphere of activity, in so far as it has not already been eliminated by industry itself by the device of cartelization. There are, however, two respects in which this economic freedom ought to be limited. In each branch of industry the number of working hours per week ought so to be reduced by law that unemployment is systematically abolished. At the same time minimum wages must be fixed in such a way that the purchasing power of the workers keeps pace with production.
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POPSObamaCare To Thwack Middle Class With Up To 70% Marginal Tax Rate Jim Capretta, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, calculates that when combined with other policies like the Earned Income Tax Credit that also phase out, the effective marginal rate would rise to nearly 70% at twice the poverty level. (HT: hot air Handcrafted by Flip
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POPSNew Taxes on Universal Health Care "According to the JCT, this $180 billion in new taxes would include: A new tax on prescription drug makers that would account for $22.2 billion over 10 years; a new tax on medical device manufacturers that would bring in $38.6 billion; and a new annual tax on insurance companies would net the government $60.4 billion."
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POPSCorporate Dirty Work (or Big Fat Lies Exposed) Peta kills animals. Mercury in fish is not a problem. Increasing wages of the lowest paid will harm America. Trans fats and sugars are good for you. Junk food is good for you. Climate change not a problem. The Washington Tea Baggers protest grew out of a grass roots movement: American corporate spin, aided and abetted by Rick Berman and exposed by Maddow. Brilliant!
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POPSFinal word: Democrats are Worse Than Republicans It has been argued that the Democratic party is only about two degress left of the Republican party. Even is it is true, it is only true in a politically useless way. Their point of view on reproductive rights depends on if they are talking to religious bigots or progressives. Obama panders to the right-wing on health care for undocumented workers, who are, as usual, good enough to work for slave wages and pay into the system, but not good enough to receive benefits. On the issue of the war there could not be any clearer expression of the operational similarities between the Democrats and Republicans. This country is sorely in need of an independent, working class oriented, political movement that relentlessly attacks exploitation and oppression everywhere it rears its head. And the first step toward that is to lose all illusions in the Democratic Party, and stop providing any kind of left cover for them.
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POPSObamacare 'Wrap-Up' Guts Conservatives Amendments The wrap-up amendment expands powers granted to a brand new Medicare Commission endowing these bureaucrats with the ability to raise premiums on Medicare prescription drug coverage at will. Democrats had worked out a deal with hospitals in secret negotiations over the summer to exempt them from the extensive plans for cuts in Medicare rates. This “carve out” would exempt hospitals from these reductions but the CBO estimated the provision would add $11 billion to the overall cost of the bill. No problem for Dems, just rack up another $11 billion in stealth cuts to Medicare for an offset. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) offered an amendment that was agreed to in the committee markup without objection to shield veterans from increases in the cost of their medical care and reductions in access to treatment. In the wrap-up amendment, Democrats voted to gut the veteran protections, without the customary consultation to the amendment’s author, reducing the amendment to mere . . .
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POPSPostal Employees Paid to Do Nothing I do not know about where you work, but where I work when the company does not have any work for me I do not work and I do not get paid. Unless of course I happen to qualify for unemployment benefits which pays me about 1/3 of what I would make if I actually worked. To add insult to injury, the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT is now going to BAIL OUT the post office and FORCE US TO PAY these idle workers OUT OF OUR HARD EARNED MONEY. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! And then we wonder why taxes continue to climb while those of us who actually make this country work continue to have to cut back and struggle to make ends meet.
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POPSHealth Costs Outpace Inflation And Wage Growth
So they're passing the costs to employees, who're paying higher deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses while often receiving less comprehensive coverage for their money. Twenty-one percent of firms with insurance coverage reduced benefits or increased employee cost-sharing due to the recession, the survey found. Fifteen percent increased their workers' shares of the monthly premium. "When health care costs continue to rise so much faster than overall inflation in a bad recession, workers and employers really feel the pain," said Drew Altman, the president and chief executive of the Kaiser Family Foundation. Employers typically pay about $9,860 of the standard $13,375 family policy, the survey found. Workers pick up the rest, about $3,515 or 27 percent. That's the same share as last year. The cost of single coverage increased slightly this year, averaging about $4,824 compared to $4,704 last year. Employees pay about 17 percent of the cost, or $779 toward the coverage.
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POPSJobless Rate Reaches 9.8 Percent in September "If they're struggling, they're not consuming. That just takes some of the legs out of recovery." The Labor Department said Friday that the U.S. economy lost a net total of 263,000 jobs last month, from a downwardly revised 201,000 in August. That's worse than Wall Street economists' expectations of 180,000 job losses, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters. The unemployment rate rose from 9.7 percent in August, matching expectations. If laid-off workers who have settled for part-time work or have given up looking for new jobs are included, the unemployment rate rose to 17 percent, the highest on records dating from 1994. All told, 15.1 million Americans are now out of work, the department said. And 7.2 million jobs have been eliminated since the recession began in December 2007. The department said 571,000 of the unemployed dropped out of the work force last month, presumably out of frustration over the lack of jobs. That sent the participation rate,
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POPSMinimum Wages vs Welfare Incredibly: Welfare provides the equivalent of an hourly pretax wage of $14.75 in New York City, $12.45 in Philadelphia, $11.35 in Baltimore, and $10.90 in Detroit. For the hard-core welfare recipient, the value of the full range of welfare benefits substantially exceeds the amount the recipient could earn in an entry-level job. As a result, recipients are likely to choose welfare over work, thus increasing long-term dependence.
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POPSmore from: Imperial Ambitions
it previously states-in the background is a long-standing US hatred of the European social system-which provides decent wages-working conditions and benefits-the US doesn't want that model to exist because it is a dangerous one-with the US economy deteriorating and with the prospect of more layoffs on the horizon, how is the Bush administration going to maintain what some are calling a garrison state-engaged in permanent war and the occupation of numerous countries-how are they going to pull it off- they onlly need to pul it off for another 6 years-by that time they hope to have institutionalized a series of highly reactionary programs within the US-they wil have left the economy in a serious state with huge deficits-by then it will be somebody else's problem-meanwhile they will have undermined social programs and diminished democracy which of course they hate- seems to me to be what has happened to us here in the United States in a bit of a nutshell- look at us now........he called i
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POPSVodoo Economics Unfortunately, in practice, the theory had mixed results. During Ronald Reagan’s presidency, a combination of laws cut taxes tremendously for those in the highest tax brackets. The intention behind this was to encourage more investing by those who could afford it, but the benefits for lower-income brackets were marginal. Proponents argued that despite tax cuts, tax revenue would actually go up, since employment would increase significantly due to new businesses. This effect never really occurred, and savings rates actually declined
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POPSGovernment, The Destroyer Of Worlds' Now you can see why President Obama is hell-bent on nationalizing one-sixth of the economy with his thinly disguised health care "overhaul". It helps hasten the destruction of the hated free market system and perhaps capitalism itself.
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POPSPhilosophical Weblogs This is a list of weblogs that are devoted to topics in and around analytic philosophy, or that are by analytic philosophers
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POPSAfghanistan and the Wages of Empire
WASHINGTON -- On Monday, as the vote-counting in Afghanistan was nearing an end, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was briefed by the American ambassador in Kabul, Karl W. Eikenberry. The same day, the ambassador delivered a blunt message to the front-runner, President Hamid Karzai: "Don't declare victory." The slim majority tentatively awarded Mr. Karzai in Afghanistan's fraud-scarred election has put the Obama administration in an awkward spot: trying to balance its professed determination to investigate mounting allegations of corruption and vote-rigging while not utterly alienating the man who seems likely to remain the country's leader for another five years. Another way of putting it might be to say that U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to construct a rationale for allowing the man they put in charge of Afghanistan to remain in charge of Afghanistan. This is not a new problem. Colonial powers have faced these challenges throughout h
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POPSThe Coalition of the Unwilling, the Bullied and the Bribed The Bush League of Nations is an essential guide for progressives and other patriots seeking to undo the damage caused by America's worst president and worst political party ever. Debatable as it,s subjective from authors view point but the free downloadof entire book is full off information for those of us interested in politics the left , undecided,center or right wing, check it out~ ~This book is dedicated to the Dixie Chicks: Natalie Maines Martre Maguire and Emily Robison. "Six Strong Hands on the Steering Wheel".
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POPSImporting Poverty: The Cheap Labor Trap The great success story of the United States is that it raised the working class into the middle class, the real path to higher standards of living for the population as a whole. But there are those in the business community who seem to think the American achievement has been overdone. In their view, we need more poverty, not less. Open borders and a new “guest workers” program to legalize millions of illegal aliens is what groups like the Chamber of Commerce desire, in effect creating a proletariat.
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