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POPSTop 25 Censored Stories for 2009 # # 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights # # 17 UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights # # 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers # # 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction # # 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record # # 21 NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option # # 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid # # 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs # # 24 Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror # # 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer
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POPSIRS ID program - fraud costs billions in tax refunds We'd be better off being illegal immigrants in our own country, the benefits out weigh the negatives. Actually it is getting to where there is no down side to being an illegal here anymore. May as well dissolve the INS, Border Patrol, Customs, think of all that money liberals could waste on their 'worthwhile' programs.
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POPSSibling bonds in adoption: How important are they? One of the most important and toughest issues in adoptive parenting is the sibling connection. Social workers have a huge responsibility to find adoptive home that will take siblings, especially if there are several children in a family unit. Adoptive parents struggle with maintaining an open relationship with adoptive children who are not in the home and with birth family member relationships. Adoptive children question why they were picked for adoption and their sibling(s) were not. Have you adopted siblings? Share your story by tweeting us or commenting below. How important is the sibling connection?
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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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POPSFirst, Do No Harm BU Med student accused of Craigslist killing and robberies. Gender-bending Harvard-educated rifle-wielding wife-murdering dermatologist Richard Sharpe ends it all in prison. Hooker-frequenting hammer-and-slash wife-murdering prominent allergist Dirk Greineder seeks a new trial. Harvard-trained doc who walked away from surgery does time on drug charges but skates on child rape charges when witness refuses to testify. You’ve got your nursing Angel of Death du jour. Nursing assistant accused of terrorizing elderly. Drug docs to the stars! A rash of them are staring at charges related to buried mistakes Jacko and Anna Nicole. All that’s before you get to the little remarked-upon regular run of docs who believe in hands-on examinations … whether their patients need it or not. In a lot of those cases, the oath should have been “First, Do No Pharm.” But howbout, “First, Weed Out Barmy.” I know, I know, for every murderous, abusive wackjob there are thousands of caring,
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POPSHero Saves 4 Year-Old's Life One Day and "Pops The Question" on TV the Next Day
The 33-year-old, known to friends as Billy, flashed back to that smoke-filled terror when he heard the screams Wednesday night from a fourth-floor apartment. Cretan was working with his then-girlfriend, Desiree Guzman, inside their electronics business near the burning building. She watched as he grabbed a ladder and scrambled onto the fire escape. Minutes later, Cretan was lugging the semi-conscious youth down to waiting rescue workers. "He saved my boy's life," said Pharbodial Ramcharran, 40, after his son's rescue. "Nothing else matters. My boy looked pretty good this morning. He hugged and kissed me." During his television appearance, Cretan segued from an interview to an engagement. "You know that I'm a handful already, we both know that," Cretan told 24-year-old Desiree. "I promise you one thing, there's never going to be a dull moment. "So therefore will you marry me anyway?" His girlfriend, after agreeing, shared a kiss and a long hug with her new
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POPSFlorida Care-Giver System Plagued With Felons 12 registered sex offenders and 200 people with histories of harming children. Exemptions are supposed to be granted only with proof of rehabilitation. But about 1,800 of the people approved " or one in five " went on to be arrested again, some within days of the state's determination that they could be trusted to care for vulnerable residents. "It's totally unacceptable. Obviously, this has become a huge loophole that needs to be closed," said Nan Rich, D-Weston, vice chairwoman of the Florida Senate's Children, Families and Elder Affairs committee. A sex abuse scandal at a Miami day care in the mid 1980s prompted the first of several state laws requiring background checks for caregivers and allowing for exemptions. Florida now has a patchwork system with glaring inconsistencies. Employees at day cares and facilities for the disabled undergo a nationwide criminal check. But caregivers for the elderly are checked only for offenses in Florida, with some exceptions.
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POPSWhite America has never liked social insurance for people of color More: Meanwhile, there has been a massive expansion in government-sponsored welfare going disproportionately to the white and affluent. What the political scientist Christopher Howard calls the hidden welfare state includes the tax-favored employer-provided health insurance that most working-age Americans depend on, as well as the home mortgage interest deduction and the childcare and child tax credits. Affluent and educated workers are more likely to work for employers who provide private health benefits than are low-skilled workers and employees of small businesses. Personal tax benefits like the home mortgage interest deduction are available only to the top half of households who pay federal income taxes, and are unavailable to lower-income workers who pay payroll taxes but no income taxes. In many cases, the benefits of this tax-credit welfare state increase with income.
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POPSGet Ready for Detroit-Style Labor Relations in our Hospitals The current House version of ObamaCare (H.R. 3200) goes much further. Section 225(A) grants Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius tremendous discretionary authority to regulate health-care workers "under the public health insurance option." Monopoly bargaining and compulsory union dues may quickly become a required standard resulting in potentially hundreds of thousands of doctors and nurses across the country being forced into unions. Ms. Sebelius will be taking her marching orders from the numerous union officials who are guaranteed seats on the various federal panels (such as the personal care panel mentioned above) charged with recommending health-care policies. Big Labor will play a central role in directing federal health-care policy affecting hundreds of thousands of doctors, surgeons and nurses. Consider Kaiser Permanente, the giant, managed-care organization that has since 1997 proudly touted its labor-management "partnership"
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POPSRead the Union Health-Care Label There's more. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has suggested that the federal government could pay for health-care reform by taxing American workers' existing health-care benefits—but he would exempt union-negotiated health-care plans. Under Mr. Baucus's scheme, the government could impose costs of up to $20,000 per employee on nonunion businesses already struggling to afford health care plans. Mr. Baucus's proposal would give union officials another tool to pressure employers into turning over their employees to Big Labor. Rather than provide the lavish benefits required by Obamacare, employers could allow a union to come in and negotiate less costly benefits than would otherwise be required. Such plans could be continuously exempted. ObamaCare is a Trojan Horse for more forced unionization.
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POPSLow-wage workers are often cheated by their employers More: The researchers said one of the most surprising findings was how successful low-wage employers were in pressuring workers not to file for workers’ compensation. Only 8 percent of those who suffered serious injuries on the job filed for compensation to pay for medical care and missed days at work stemming from those injuries… The study found that women were far more likely to suffer minimum wage violations than men, with the highest prevalence among women who were illegal immigrants. Among American-born workers, African-Americans had a violation rate nearly triple that for whites… The report found that 57 percent of workers sampled had not received mandatory pay documents the previous week, which are intended to help make sure pay is legal and accurate. Of workers who receive tips, 12 percent said their employer had stolen some of the tips."
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POPSAmerican Income Life Insurance Info American Income Life Insurance Company has a very good reputation where I come from because they offer free child safety kits, in addition to their inexpensive, but valuable, services. They are interested in what is best for working people, and say that loudly and proudly.
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POPSEnding the Anchor-Baby Problem In an interview with Business Week, director of NumbersUSA.com, Rob Beck, said, “The U.S. should pass H.R. 1868--the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2009--so all babies born on U.S. soil are no longer automatically made citizens. “Maternity tourism is just the beginning of the silliness of birthright citizenship that goes to the babies of foreign students, temporary foreign workers, international travelers--and the millions who break the law to criminally enter this country.” With an astounding 400,000 anchor babies or “Jackpot babies” as named by radio talk show host Terry Anderson in Los Angeles, www.theterryandersonshow.com, American taxpayers pay a heavy price for a total misinterpretation of the 14th amendment of our Constitution.
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POPSFighting malaria through pop music Music is a powerful educational tool in Africa, where many are illiterate, and the song was set to a lively, mbalax rhythm and produced in Wolof, Serere and Pulaar, the three most common languages in Senegal. “You need to pay attention to what the population listens to the most in order to touch them and raise public awareness,” singer-activist Youssou N'Dour told GlobalPost. “We have all had family or friends who have died from malaria,"said N'Dour. “I see all the problems that we experience here, and if I think I bring something to an issue, I do it.” As the song hit airwaves, Senegal and its international partners launched a campaign to distribute two million treated mosquito nets nationwide. The goal of the week-long effort was to get every child under age five sleeping under a net. The song was also distributed to radio stations and 1,300 health huts nationwide in the hopes of creating a viral, grassroots education effort.
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POPSFamous prostitute's gravestone deemed too 'slutty'
Maybe provocative or sexy. I wouldn't call it "slutty" though? "But the cemetery officials are not alone in criticising Ungerer’s memorial. Photographer Günther Zint, another friend of Niehoff, told the newspaper, “There was a bit of a debate among her friends whether Tomi needed to emphasise her breasts like that. They were after all a bane of her life.” Niehoff, who gained fame for advocating the rights of sex workers in the 70s and 80s, died at age 63 in February 2009. Originally from Cologne, Niehoff lived through drugs, child prostitution and desperate attempts to get out of the sex trade. She grew up in an orphanage before slipping into prostitution, when she married a brothel owner, who committed suicide ten years later. She worked as a prostitute in Munich and Hamburg and had her own brothel before she began to push for the legalisation of prostitution in Germany in the 1980s. She then became a social worker to help women to get off the street."
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POPSZimbabwean girl speaks out about rape, in captivity. A child rights activist, who asked not to be named, says the scale of the rape and abuse in the last few months has taken aid workers by surprise. "We have been caught unaware by this political crisis where women and girls are being abused and raped in the areas the ruling party has sealed off," she says. "These abuses should leave politicians hanging their heads in shame for not assisting their own mothers and sisters as is the norm in African culture." As the country heads for a second round of a presidential election on 27 June, the MDC says Maidei's case is not unique. "Pungwes" are gatherings held in the open where people are forced to sing revolutionary songs to prove their loyalty to the ruling party. Many residents are made to attend, including girls as young as 16 where, if they catch a commander's eye, they are kept at the base until the militia leave.
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POPSSlumdog child star left homeless Someone has some money and the kids will be the last to see any. The attitude would be more that the children should be indebted for being given the opportunity - a classic rip off line.
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