Just to show you how out of touch the "Haves" are, Queen Elizabeth II Gets a 20% Raise.
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Thursday, June 21, 2012
Some Employers and Republicans Want to Lower the Minimum Wage -- Here's Why They're Completely Out of Touch
Just to show you how out of touch the "Haves" are, Queen Elizabeth II Gets a 20% Raise.
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Health Care: Give the People What They Want
I understand that one of the ways these countries keep costs down is to seriously underpay their healthcare workers. As a result they can't get enough people willing to do all they have to do for low pay. So they have to bring in people from third world countries willing to work at those rates.==============================
FWIW, healthcare providers (the people who are actually providing the healthcare to patients) haven't had a raise in close to 20 years.
Meet The New 1%: - Healthcare CEOs replace bankers as America's best paid:
Pity Wall Street's bankers. Once the highest-paid bosses in the land, they are now also-rans. The real money is in healthcare and drugs, according to the latest survey of executive pay. One example is Joel Gemunder, CEO Omnicare, who had a total pay package in 2010 worth $98 million.
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Health Care: Give the People What They Want
There were other alternatives such as tort reform, readily available prior to revamping the whole healthcare system.
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Republicans' push for tort reform has always been a red herring. The cost of malpractice to the health care system is miniscule, and even at that, it covers only a tiny portion of the harm inflicted on patients by a system designed to produce profit, not good results.
What malpractice suits there are are due to regulatory failure and previous tort reform that have allowed corporations to make as much money as they want without concern for consumers' safety.
Before any medical malpractice case even gets to most courts, for judges not to throw it out of court, it must be reviewed by physician panels. When even the board-certified peers of doctors being sued think a patient has a case, then Republicans' pushing tort reform must have an ulterior motive.
What could it be?
It's two ulterior motives, actually.
One is that what tort reform would prevent is discovery. Discovery, the process by which lawyers can legally pierce and penetrate the Corporate veil and learn the dirty little secrets about how that Corporation has operated.
The other is that lawyers, both individually and in professional association, tend to donate more money to Democrats. Republicans would love to stop that flow of bucks.
Citizens of the US have little enough voice and power in this democracy without eliminating one of the last methods for seeking legal redress and remedies for ourselves.
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Nancy Pelosi Slams Contempt Vote: 'I Could Have Arrested Karl Rove ... But We Didn't' [UPDATE]
No, it's called 'inherent contempt'.
Following a contempt citation, the person cited for contempt is arrested by the Sergeant-at-Arms for the House or Senate, brought to the floor of the chamber, held to answer charges by the presiding officer, and then subject to punishment that the House may dictate (usually imprisonment for punishment reasons, imprisonment for coercive effect, or release from the contempt citation).
There are actually jail cells in the Capitol building:
Congress began early in its history to protect its ability to compel testimony to it by private citizens and executive officials by arresting and jailing--in the Capitol--those who refused to cooperate. The first case dates to 1795. The Supreme Court in 1821, in Anderson v. Dunn, recognized Congress' inherent power but noted that the power was limited to "the least power adequate to the end proposed," and the court limited imprisonment, saying it could not last beyond the adjournment of Congress. Congress passed a statute in 1857 to allow longer terms of imprisonment as well as allowing it to turn contempt cases over to the courts for indictment and trial, with penalties including fines of "not more than $1,000 nor less than $100" and imprisonment "in a common jail of not less than one month nor more than twelve months."
About Eric Holder
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Nancy Pelosi Slams Contempt Vote: 'I Could Have Arrested Karl Rove ... But We Didn't' [UPDATE]
It's not as if what Republicans are doing should come as any surprise; obstruction has been their favored tactic for thwarting populist legislation since Reagan. Anyone alive even in the 1990s, and Clinton's impeachment, should know this.
About Eric Holder
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Nancy Pelosi Slams Contempt Vote: 'I Could Have Arrested Karl Rove ... But We Didn't' [UPDATE]
If Republicans are so bad (and I think they are), why did Pelosi and Democrats not arrest Rove and take impeachment off the table? Why is Obama blocking all investigations and prosecutions into the Bush-Cheney administration? Perhaps if Bill Clinton hadn't done the same thing for the Reagan-Bush administration over Iran-Contra, we wouldn't have been saddled with Bush-Cheney at all.
When Obama came into power, the GOP wasn't on the ropes; it was down for the count. And Obama issued them a pardon. The rightwing attacking Obama and their refusal to work in "a bipartisan manner" should have pushed Obama to play hardball and move populist legislation through Congress quickly and decisively. To undo the Bush-Cheney abuses, especially with the tentative hold on a filibuster-proof majority Democrats were given in the 2008 election. Instead, Obama let Republicans dictate the pace and shape a debate that was already done and voted on and won by Democrats in 2008.
Obama (nor Pelosi nor Reid) expresses absolutely no remorse or plans to do anything differently should he win reelection.
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Nancy Pelosi Slams Contempt Vote: 'I Could Have Arrested Karl Rove ... But We Didn't' [UPDATE]
That is exactly what she's saying. It's an incredible admission on her part, and one that should be followed up by the media.
About Eric Holder
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Nancy Pelosi Slams Contempt Vote: 'I Could Have Arrested Karl Rove ... But We Didn't' [UPDATE]
This (Democrats' refusal to enforce the rule of law) is an extraordinary admission by Pelosi. Particularly as she is admitting it as the reason that Republicans shouldn't uphold rule of law by holding Holder in contempt.
At the very root of our problems are Constitutional crises created by, first, Republican presidents and now under a Democratic president. Republicans' utter contempt for the Constitution and callous disregard for creating them caused by Democrats' cowering response is what underpins all of our problems and what's destroying the country.
As president, you've got to really want the US to work, to exist, to not exploit the loopholes in the Constitution that keep our three-branches of government precariously balancing the democracy. But BushCheney drove tanks through the loopholes, breaking the law and with no apparent concern for exposing the loopholes or any consequences.
Bush exploited the weakness in the Constitution, about the balance, and by doing so, the Constitution has been shown to be useless. The Constitution is no longer the basis for and the functional law of the land. The Constitution is no longer much respected in Congress, the Executive Branch, the SupremeCourt, nor in law or business.
Bush wasn't the first to create Constitutional crises, but he created more of them, eviscerating the Constitution for all time. How do you go forward with it when its Achilles' heel has been laid bare for any BushCheney wannabe waiting in the weeds to exploit? What's now happened in the aftermath of BushCheney is that what Nixon did has been made legal. Once BushCheney happened, once they exploited those loopholes for everyone to see, you can't just go on as if it never happened. You can't "look forward, not back".
The situation might have been remedied had Democrats and Obama come into office investigating and prosecuting the Bush administration and restoring the 'rule of law'. BushCheney exploited the inherent weaknesses in the Constitution: A precarious balance of power between the three branches of government. But Obama refused, and has continued the BushCheney disregard of the Constitution, even going beyond BushCheney abuses.
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost