Well, yeah. Of course, I’d rather the government didn’t subisdize and award lucrative contracts to companies that are trying to cover up crimes and screw over their employees, but that’s just me.
You must keep perspective on this. This sort of persecution is all very well for sordid criminal enterprises, like ACORN. But a fine upstanding organization like this? With only a smattering of minor procedural technicalities to account for? Time and again, KBR/Halliburton has shown its patriotic zeal, their willingness to sacrfice others! Sacrifice for others, slip of the keyboard…
Nope. ‘Death panels’ was a mischaracterization that actually referred to bureaucratic decisions to disallow lifesaving treatment due to cost considerations. Do you think the government wouldn’t do something like that? I know of a woman who had a stroke and was completly paralyzed on the left side of her body. She applied for Social Security disability benefits. After six months of waiting for a decision, she was denied because the government deemed that she was still capable of doing “some kind of work.”
The government doesn’t give a shit about us. It is concerned with its own monetary considerations and its own convenience. If you fall outside those parameters, tough shit for you. The government will blow you off without a moment’s thought or regret.
So why is it so outlandish to believe that a government that would tell a 50% paralyzed woman that she could still do some kind of work would also tell an elderly or infirm person that they weren’t worth the cost of saving? (I should probably be clear here that I don’t necessarily believe this would happen right away. It might even take decades. But eventually the coffers will begin to run low, and when that happens people needing costly care - and in my opinion, elderly ones with less life left ahead in the first place and the hopelessly infirm - are gonna be told they don’t qualify.
Republicans favoring rape, on the other hand, is an outright lie that is clearly not an exaggeration or matter of degree.
Your cites? Yes, I did. Allow me to quote from the second one the following:
*Tuesday, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2 to 1 ruling, found her alleged injuries were not, in fact, in any way related to her employment and thus, not covered by the contract.
One of the judges who ruled in her favor, Rhesa Hawkins Barksdale, is a West Point grad, Vietnam vet, and one of the court’s most conservative members, a sign, perhaps, of just how bad the facts are in this case.*
[bolding mine]
So, the facts were bad, a conservative judge agreed, and Jones got her day in court. End of story. Why do we need bills passed in Congress, the paperwork and compliance issues and expense for which all companies seeking to do business with the government will have to contend with, in order to enforce laws that are already on the books?
Well, given that the number of companies trying to forbid their employees from prosecuting rape charges is legion, your concern is most understandable.
:rolleyes:
Gads, what a bunch of Chicken Littles. Why is it everytime anything bad or anything you don’t like happens anywhere, your immediate reaction is sweeping federal intervention? Shit happens. And when it does, we almost always have laws on the books to address it. 300 million people live in this country. We don’t need no steenkin’ new federal law every time something bad happens to one of 'em.
It’s pro-arbitration, not pro-rape. The big corporations who hire arbitrators with regularity have a strong and distinct advantage in arbitration when the worker only hires an arbitrator once in a lifetime. The corps win arbitrations nine times out of ten, which is about four times out of ten more than in courts with juries and judges. When the state makes you hear all the cases you can get, or you have to “get hired” by an arbitration company that requires repeat business, if you are the corp, you really want your regularly hired arbitrator. I am all in favor of arbitration for my large corporate clients and against it for the individual ones. If it is two equally strong commercial actors, then an arbitrator is fine. But the current system of mandatory arbitration of corporations using arbitration companies against consumers is absolutely corrupt.
Note to self: do not play Twister with Starv, he can jump six feet in the air, and tie himself into a granny knot before he’s half-way down.
So much the better. There will still be plenty of competition for defense contracts among companies that obey the law. The offenders will hardly even be missed. Good riddance.
Yeah, I did that once in a wrestling match when I was in high-school too. The other guy and I both wound up tied in knots. I was just about to pass out when I looked up and saw a pair of balls hanging in front of my face. So with the last of my strength I reached up and bit 'em as hard as I could. A blood-curdling scream and a frantic flurry of activity ensued, and next thing I knew I had that other guy pinned to the floor and won the match.
It’s amazing what you can do when you bite yourself in the balls like that.
The irony, it burns!
In any case though, I am very surprised and happy to hear that you’re supportive of the concept of Social Security. That’s rare among right-wingers, and credit where credit’s due. Kudos.
I do not think I said what you think that I said. 
I’m not supportive of Social Security and I never have been. I thought it was ridiculous and a ripoff even when I was in my teens.
If the government was going to take the position that people wouldn’t set anything aside for their retirement years (a position that clearly is so for many if not most people) would have much preferred to see a system by which funds taken from our earnings were put into interest-bearing savings accounts or something along that line. Then we’d have had enough to live on, and in the even we died either prematurely or before our savings ran out, they could be passed on to our spouses and children. That would have been a concept I could support.
But no, the government couldn’t juke around with it and use if for political gain if it did that. Nor could it take take money from the program and put it into the general fund instead - something that was never intended when the program was initiated and which had the effect of making us pay Social Security taxes that were never used for Social Security.
These are yet more reasons I’m distrustful of and opposed to government social programs. If government was truly so concerned about us and our old age well-being, any number of private alternatives would have given us more. But that way the government would have had no control over our money and polititians couldn’t use it to manipulate voters, so of course they devised a plan whereby they are in charge of everything, and the result is that many people get back only a fraction of what they paid in, and if they die prematurely or before they realize a realtime return of what might laughingly be referred to as their investment in their old age, the difference between what they paid into the program and what they got back out of it stays with the government.
It’s a huge ripoff and one that would land people in jail if they tried to operate a similar program privately. But it’s so thoroughly ingrained by now, and so many people have become so heavily invested in it for so many decades, that there’s no way to get rid of it. Hopefully the time will arrive that it will become privatized, but it won’t happen anytime soon.
Oh, so you only like Social Security as a prop for a story criticizing the government. Your friend couldn’t get something that you would have denied her yourself had you been Emperor Of The Universe, so the government is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Gotcha.
I don’t know what you’re upset about. It’s not outlandish at all to think that people who actively support torture would turn a blind eye to this. Wrap it in enough flags and/or greenbacks and you’re golden.
In the federal appeals court! Why should a plaintiff have to endure the stress, delay and expense of pursuing a case all the way to the appeals court? This law would have given her the justice she deserved in a timely, efficient manner in the lower court. Why do you want to keep putting sticks in the wheels of Americans seeking justice from big Republican donors?
Prostitution is already illegal too, so why should the government defund ACORN?
This is false. It referred to a provision (put in by a Republican) that would have done nothing more than pay for people to get end of life counselling if the wanted. It did not involve any beaurocratic decisions about lifesaving treatment whatsoever.
I would have thought this would be obvious, but government is already kinda-sorta-tangientially involved in the selection and regulation of government contractors.
This is truly the thread that will never die. I offer up today’s nominee from one Louis Gohmert (R-TX) on what will happen if hate crimes legislation passes. Necrophiliacs rejoice!
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/07/gohmert-hate-crime/
PS Hate crimes legislation will lead to electing little guys with funny mustaches (like HITLER!)
God damn it, you stupid, stupid son of a bitch. The government IS us. What the fuck is it going to take for you to recognize that?
On edit: You know what? Never mind. Don’t even bother wasting my time with a response.
Oh dear god. There really is no hope.
No the fuck it isn’t!
It’s a bunch of bureaucratic functionaries and manipulative, self-serving politicians and legislators who more and more want to increase our taxes and control our lives. (Not that your ilk would find that objectionable in the least.)
We aren’t the government any more than a school’s student body is its administration.
Too late, assface. You don’t get to act like an asshole to me and then claim time out. You want considerate behavior from me then you better show it too.
What percent of Republican Congressmen are whackjobs like him and Bachmann? I can tolerate classic conservatives (lower taxes/smaller government/reduce spending), but it seems like more and more of them are these shrill ideologues that are slaves to hot button social issues. Is that really still working for them?