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and his father, the saudi's, etc...
Sounds like something I need to read.
Haven't read that one... do you recommend it? I read the one by Kevin Phillips about the Bush family... American Dynasty.
george has stubborned himself right into a corner
don't know exactly, but I think it's going to be more than 20%... depends on a lot of factors including credit score.
welcome, but sorry to hear about the condos. the market has definitely turned to a buyers market.
nice catch!
now there's an interesting connection which should be pursue... case is NOT closed.
that's one of the keys to good comedy... people recognizing the truth in it
there is something to be said about not mindlessly doing what you are "told" LOL
ROFL!!!
where are you getting these?
bad! LOL
well worth watching. Wish I had time to read the book.
unfortunately some minds are closed and completely unwilling to read, think or analyze... it's so much easier to take lead from others whether it be authority figures or talk show idiots.
that was definitely inspired! ROFL!
Jon Stewart has such a fun way to get at the underlying truths... I especially loved the avacado bit.
LOL
although if I was the teacher I wouldn't buy it... it's more like stupidity or even cowardess... it's often harder to stay and calmly face a tough situation
I agree with that
Fuzzy Math video
about Bush... takes a while to load
http://www.thebots.net/FuzzyMathVideo.htm
all you have to do is look at those running that board to know it's not worth even looking at... just a new version of NOLIB
Can't trust anything on Drudge, he's proven that time and again
sounds like something that would happen in a police state
ok, thanks.
thanks for the report.
Quite a while ago I read American Dynasty by Kevin Phillips about the Bush family... that went into alot of the history of the family back several generations. Is this similiar?
to me it seeemed like his previous work supported Bush when it wasn't popular to bash him... and now that it's okay to bash him, he comes out in the open... it's chicken shit in my book... BUT at least it's out now... better late than never.
sorry, wish I could help... probably need to call your broker.
when I reread his post, I realized he was trying to defend the GOP leadership not Folley (him)... a fine line and still not good
my apologies... I miss understood your post
LOL true :)
just a continued reminder not to shop at Wal Mart
no matter what system you have, you have to have people who will enforce it and carry out the order of law.
These people have to go. If the ethics committee was working the way it's suppose to work, these problems would be addressed... it's the people in power that are the problem IMO
my favorite part of the memo is the part that the pay caps don't apply to home office or field managers... typical
http://graphics.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/business/20061002_WALMART/20061002_walmart_memo.pdf
Wal-Mart to Add Wage Caps and Part-Timers
Peter Yates for The New York Times
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: October 2, 2006
Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, is pushing to create a cheaper, more flexible work force by capping wages, using more part-time workers and scheduling more workers on nights and weekends.
Wal-Mart sent the following confidential memo to managers, instructing them how to answer questions from employees about new pay ranges and wage caps. The document was provided to The New York Times by
WakeUpWalMart.com,
a union-funded group that is critical of the retailer.
WalMart Memo on Wage Caps
(pdf)
Wal-Mart executives say they have embraced new policies for a large number of their 1.3 million workers to better serve their customers, especially at busy shopping times — and point out that competitors like Sears and Target have made some of these moves, too.
But some Wal-Mart workers say the changes are further reducing their already modest incomes and putting a serious strain on their child-rearing and personal lives. Current and former Wal-Mart workers say some managers have insisted that they make themselves available around the clock, and assert that the company is making changes with an eye to forcing out longtime higher-wage workers to make way for lower-wage part-time employees.
Investment analysts and store managers say Wal-Mart executives have told them the company wants to transform its work force to 40 percent part-time from 20 percent. Wal-Mart denies it has a goal of 40 percent part-time workers, although company officials say that part-timers now make up 25 percent to 30 percent of workers, up from 20 percent last October.
To some extent, Wal-Mart is simply doing what business strategists recommend: deploying workers more effectively to meet the peaks and valleys of business in their stores. Wall Street, which has put pressure on Wal-Mart to raise its stock price, has endorsed the strategy, with analysts praising the new approach to managing its workers. In the last three years, the stock price has fallen about 10 percent, closing at $49.32 a share on Friday.
“They need to be doing some of this,” said Charles Grom, an analyst at J. P. Morgan Chase who covers Wal-Mart. It lets the company schedule employees “when they are generating most of their sales — at lunch, in the evening on the weekends.”
But Sally Wright, 67, an $11-an-hour greeter at the Wal-Mart in Ponca City, Okla., said she quit in August after 22 years with the company when managers pressed her to make herself available to work any time, day or night. She requested staying on the day shift, but her manager reduced her schedule from 32 hours a week to 8 and refused her pleas for more hours, she said.
“They were trying to get rid of me,” Ms. Wright said. “I think it was to save on health insurance and on the wages.”
Wal-Mart vigorously denies it is pushing out longtime or full-time employees and says its moves will ensure its competitiveness. The company says it gives employees three weeks’ notice of their schedules and takes their preferences into account, but that description differs from those of many workers interviewed. Workers said that their preferences were often ignored and that they were often given only a few days’ notice of scheduling changes.
These moves have been unfolding in the year since Wal-Mart’s top human resources official sent the company’s board a confidential memo stating, with evident concern, that experienced employees were paid considerably more than workers with just one year on the job, while being no more productive. The memo, disclosed by The New York Times in October 2005, also recommended hiring healthier workers and more part-time workers because they were less likely to enroll in Wal-Mart’s health plan.
Other big retailers, with or without unions, have begun using more part-time workers, adopted wage caps and instituted more demanding work schedules in one form or another. But because Wal-Mart is such a giant — its $312 billion in sales last year exceeded the sales of the next five biggest retailers combined — its new labor practices may well influence policies more broadly.
And Wal-Mart’s tougher scheduling demands could be especially taxing on workers because, unlike its competitors, the chain has many stores — more than 1,900 out of 4,000 — that are open 24 hours.
Human resources experts have long said that companies benefit most from having experienced workers. Yet Wal-Mart officials say the efficiencies they gain will outweigh the effects of having what labor experts say would be a less experienced, less stable, lower-paid work force.
Sarah Clark, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said the company viewed the changes as “a productivity improvement through which we will improve the shopping experience for our customers and make Wal-Mart a better place to work for our associates,” as Wal-Mart refers to its employees.
But some workplace experts point to the downside of the policies. Susan J. Lambert, a professor of social sciences at the University of Chicago who has written several research papers on retail workers, called it a burden for employees to cope with constant schedule changes.
more...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/business/02walmart.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
is that board still around? I thought it died a long time ago
both are bad situations, but there is a big difference between consenting adults vs children... you are sick to defend these guys... don't forget the Repubs didn't get rid of him for FIVE years
there it is... confirmation... five years, heads need to roll
I saw on TV news today an interesting statement by the reporter to the effect looks like the GOP chose retaining a congressional seat and power rather than protecting children
and it was mentioned that the GOP may have known for FIVE years about this... haven't confirmed this yet
"Do not wait! The time will never be 'just right'. Start where you stand
and work with whatever tools you may have at your command and better
tools will be found as you go along."
--Napoleon Hill
posted by OU in the OUZone
I doubt wind or solar is a viable alternative to meet all the demands..
true which is why we need to keep looking for more solutions... keep working on the problem... invest in research and encourage our best minds to work on the problem. When I'm faced with a problem, I don't stop looking for solutions until I've found an acceptable one.
As for China, the first step in doing anything at all about that is to clean up our own act and be a shinning example. Pointing to them is not an excuse not to do what we can and should do here.
America’s Army on the Edge
<< anyone really care about our troops? is it patriotic to support a President and Secretary of Defense who's leadership threatens the safety of our men and women in arms AND our long term future and safety? and why isn't congress acting? >>
Published: October 1, 2006
Even if there were a case for staying the current course in Iraq, America’s badly overstretched Army cannot sustain present force levels much longer without long-term damage. And that could undermine the credibility of American foreign policy for years to come.
The Army has been kept on short rations of troops and equipment for years by a Pentagon more intent on stockpiling futuristic weapons than fighting today’s wars. Now it is pushing up against the limits of hard arithmetic. Senior generals are warning that the Bush administration may have to break its word and again use National Guard units to plug the gap, but no one in Washington is paying serious attention. That was clear last week when Congress recklessly decided to funnel extra money to the Air Force’s irrelevant F-22 stealth fighter.
As early as the fall of 2003, the Congressional Budget Office warned that maintaining substantial force levels in Iraq for more than another six months would be difficult without resorting to damaging short-term expedients. The Pentagon then had about 150,000 troops in Iraq. Three years later, those numbers have not fallen appreciably. For much of that time, the Pentagon has plugged the gap by extending tours of duty, recycling soldiers back more quickly into combat, diverting National Guard units from homeland security and misusing the Marine Corps as a long-term occupation force.
These emergency measures have taken a heavy toll on combat readiness and training, on the quality of new recruits, and on the career decisions of some of the Army’s most promising young officers. They cannot be continued indefinitely.
Now, with the security situation worsening in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon concedes that no large withdrawals from either country are likely for the foreseeable future. As a result, even more drastic and expensive steps could soon be needed. The most straightforward would be to greatly increase the overall number of Army combat brigades. That would require recruiting, training and equipping the tens of thousands of additional soldiers needed to fill them.
Yet the Pentagon and Congress remain in an advanced state of denial. While the overall Defense Department budget keeps rising, pushed along by unneeded gadgetry, next year’s spending plan fails to adequately address the Army’s pressing personnel needs. Things have gotten so badly out of line that in August the Army chief of staff held up a required 2008 budget document, protesting that the Army simply could not keep doing its job without a sizable increase in spending.
A bigger army does not fit into Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s version of a technologically transformed military. And Congress prefers lavishing billions on Lockheed Martin to build stealth fighters, which are great for fighting Russian MIG’s and Chinese F-8’s but not for securing Baghdad. Army grunts are not as glamorous as fighter pilots and are a lot less profitable to equip. Yet we live in an age in which fighting on the ground to rescue failed states and isolate terrorists has become the Pentagon’s most urgent and vital military mission.
America’s credibility in that fight depends on the quality, quantity and readiness of our ground forces. If we go on demanding more and more from them while denying the resources they so desperately need, we could end up paying a terrible price.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/opinion/01sun1.html
Campaign Cash Mirrors a High Court’s Rulings
<< corruption, corruption, corruption.. are we all disgusted yet??? had enough??? >>
By ADAM LIPTAK and JANET ROBERTS
Published: October 1, 2006
COLUMBUS, Ohio — In the fall of 2004, Terrence O’Donnell, an affable judge with the placid good looks of a small-market news anchor, was running hard to keep his seat on the Ohio Supreme Court. He was also considering two important class-action lawsuits that had been argued many months before.
Justice Terrence O’Donnell, a Republican member of the Ohio Supreme Court, voted in favor of his contributors 91 percent of the time, the highest rate of any member. He said it was “misleading” to link case outcomes to contributions.
Judge William O’Neill, a Democrat on the 11th District Court of Appeals, is challenging Justice O’Donnell, running on the slogan “No money from nobody.” Justice O’Donnell has raised more than $3 million in campaign money since 2000.
In the weeks before the election, Justice O’Donnell’s campaign accepted thousands of dollars from the political action committees of three companies that were defendants in the suits. Two of the cases dealt with defective cars, and one involved a toxic substance. Weeks after winning his race, Justice O’Donnell joined majorities that handed the three companies significant victories.
Justice O’Donnell’s conduct was unexceptional. In one of the cases, every justice in the 4-to-3 majority had taken money from affiliates of the companies. None of the dissenters had done so, but they had accepted contributions from lawyers for the plaintiffs.
Thirty-nine states elect judges, and 30 states are holding elections for seats on their highest courts this year. Spending in these races is skyrocketing, with some judges raising $2 million or more for a single campaign. As the amounts rise, questions about whether money is polluting the independence of the judiciary are being fiercely debated across the nation. And nowhere is the battle for judicial seats more ferocious than in Ohio.
An examination of the Ohio Supreme Court by The New York Times found that its justices routinely sat on cases after receiving campaign contributions from the parties involved or from groups that filed supporting briefs. On average, they voted in favor of contributors 70 percent of the time. Justice O’Donnell voted for his contributors 91 percent of the time, the highest rate of any justice on the court.
In the 12 years that were studied, the justices almost never disqualified themselves from hearing their contributors’ cases. In the 215 cases with the most direct potential conflicts of interest, justices recused themselves just 9 times.
Even sitting justices have started to question the current system. “I never felt so much like a hooker down by the bus station in any race I’ve ever been in as I did in a judicial race,” said Justice Paul E. Pfeifer, a Republican member of the Ohio Supreme Court. “Everyone interested in contributing has very specific interests.”
“They mean to be buying a vote,” Justice Pfeifer added. “Whether they succeed or not, it’s hard to say.”
Three recent cases, two in Illinois and one in West Virginia, have put the complaints in sharp focus. Elected justices there recently refused to disqualify themselves from hearing suits in which tens or hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake. The defendants were insurance, tobacco and coal companies whose supporters had spent millions of dollars to help elect the justices.
After a series of big-money judicial contests around the nation, the balance of power in several state high courts has tipped in recent years in favor of corporations and insurance companies.
In the 2002 Ohio judicial election, for example, two candidates won seats that year on the seven-member court after each raised more money than one of the candidates for governor that year.
Corporate Giving Increases
Judges are required by codes of judicial ethics to disqualify themselves whenever their impartiality might reasonably be questioned over financial or other conflicts. Even owning a few shares of stock in a defendant’s company or seeing a relative’s name on a brief generally requires automatic disqualification.
But there is an exception to this strict rule: campaign contributions. Very few judges in the states that elect the members of their highest court view contributions as a reason for disqualification when those contributors appear before them.
Many judges said contributions were so common that recusal would wreak havoc on the system. The standard in the Ohio Supreme Court, its chief justice, Thomas J. Moyer, said, is to recuse only if “sitting on the case is going to be perceived as just totally unfair.”
Duane J. Adams, a plaintiff in one of the class-action suits heard by Justice O’Donnell, concerning defective cars, said he questioned the impartiality of the justices who ruled against him. Mr. Adams had sued DaimlerChrysler under the state’s lemon law, and he grew angry when told that the company’s political action committee had given money to justices in the majority.
continued...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/us/01judges.html?hp&ex=1159761600&en=eb4c4da418c95a09&...