The Reuters/Zogby survey shows that members of the President’s political base are giving him better marks than they did a few months ago, as 44% of men, 44% of Catholics, 46% of married respondents, and 52% of regular WalMart shoppers(my emphasis) rated his work well.A sorry commentary on the state of education and collective intelligence in the United States.
Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Students pursuing a master's degree in business administration cheat more than other U.S. graduate students, according to a study for the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University.Coincidence, we now have the first president who holds a Master's of Business Administration from the Harvard School of Business. We have a president who has never really had to think his way out of any situation. And we have a president form whom a democratically structured system is anathema, corporate management structures are hierarchical, everything flows from the top down. I've heard many people over the years ask "why can't the government be run like a business?" Well those idiots got their wish. This government is being run like a business, a badly managed business. And for all their talk about "thinking outside the box" once these business school morons get an idea fixed in their tiny minds, they'll run with it, and the company, or in this case the government, right into the ditch.
The study found 56 percent of MBA students acknowledged cheating, compared with 54 percent in engineering, 48 percent in education and 45 percent in law school.
Earlier studies have found a high incidence of cheating among undergraduate business students. In 1997, McCabe, a professor of management and global business who is regarded by ethics professors as a leading researcher on cheating and plagiarism, found 84 percent of undergraduate business students said they cheated at least once, compared with 72 percent of engineering students and 66 percent of all students.Here's the real laugher Officials at top business schools said they didn't see much cheating. Honor codes that require students to sign a statement on each test saying they had not cheated -- and some requiring students to report cheating by others -- are a powerful deterrent, as are frequent classroom discussions about ethical behavior, they said.
Bloomberg.com
by Mark Bruggom, KICD, SpencerO', my fuckin' gawd, the parents were smoking pot in front of the kid. The fuckin' kid's going to get hooked on marijuana if some one don't intervene. Take the little bastard out of the house and throw the parents in jail and throw away the key!!
Someone who knew or cared for a northwest Iowa child has turned the child's parents in for smoking pot.
Spencer couple's been arrested on drug charges after they consented to a search of their home. Jerry and Samatha Wise are both 35 years old and both face charges of posession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.
The Iowa Department of Human Services had received a tip drugs were being used in the Wise home, in front of a child. Both were booked at the Clay County Jail and then released.
Radio Iowa.com
Outrage burns in many an American breast, but there's scant outlet for it in the political arena. A friend of mine took his family to the annual Puyallup Fair near Tacoma, Washington. There was a CNN booth, in which a mini "Democracy Wall", an 8-by-4-foot sheet of butcher paper, was available for people to scrawl their sentiments in felt-tip. Fast as the CNN staffers changed the paper, scores more hastened forward to scribble their views, almost all of them harsh in language toward both CNN and the President. Families photographed each other in postures vulgarly disrespectful to the life-size cutout of Wolf Blitzer. When an older man -- he turned out to be the retired commander of a nuclear submarine -- rebuked the crowd and called for loyalty to Bush, the mood turned ugly, and for reasons of his personal safety he was advised to leave. "And yet," said my friend, the anthropologist David Price, "try getting these people to an antiwar rally."This is the jumping off point for a Cockburnian diatribe on the looniness of the 9/11 conspiracy aficionados. He simply dismisses them all as nuts, there is no bin Laden-Bush 9/11 conspiracy, end of discussion.
I'm sure that the Bush gang, and all the conspirators of capital, are delighted at the obsessions of the 9/11 cultists. It's a distraction from the 1,001 real plots of capitalism that demand exposure and political challenge.This is easy for him to say. Cockburn, after all, whether he likes or even wants to admit, is the product of privilege though his official biographies are very coy about his family and education, it's as if he burst forth on the journalistic stage fully-grown, as Athene from Zeus' head.
CINCINNATI, Sept 24 (Reuters) - A car commercial proclaiming a jihad on the U.S. auto market and offering "Fatwa Fridays" with free swords for the kids is offensive and should not be aired, Muslim leaders said on Sunday.Actually, it sounds kind of funny, like something out of the old movie Used Cars. But, nooooo. Like the current uproar by the world's Catholics over Madonna's mock crucifixion during her stage show, Ohio's Muslim community is offended, offended they tell you! by radio commercials which haven't even been aired as of this time. I know, I'm sounding like your average white American reactionary, you know the kind of idiot who says something like, "We called the one black kid on our high school football team "N_____" all the time and he didn't seem to care."
"They are planning on launching a jihad on the automotive market and their representatives would be wearing burqas ... ," Mirza said. "They mentioned the pope in there and also about giving rubber swords out to the kiddies -- really just reprehensible-type comments."
Details of the radio ad, which has not yet been broadcast, have been reported in the local media, but officials at the dealership declined to comment about the content of the radio spot.
He also said the Council on American-Islamic Relations would likely contact the dealer to "offer some kind of cultural or sensitivity awareness training."
Reuters.com
The fresh claims about a new anti-Semitism began life in the spring of 2002, with the English-language website of Israel's respected liberal daily newspaper, Haaretz, flagging for many months a special online supplement of articles on the "New anti-Semitism", warning that the "age-old hatred" was being revived in Europe and America. The refrain was soon taken up the Jerusalem Post, a rightwing English-language newspaper regularly used by the Israeli establishment to shore up support for its policies among Diaspora Jews.The Holocaust is real. It happened. On the implied orders of Adolf Hitler six million European Jews were exterminated, this is fact no one can deny. That being said, however, since the end of World War II the American Israel
But, as ever, the main target of the new anti-Semitism campaign were audiences in the US, Israel's generous patron. There, members of the Israel lobby were turning into a chorus of doom.
The third goal, however, had not seen before. It tied the rise of a new anti-Semitism with the increase of Islamic fundamentalism in the West, implying that Muslim extremists were asserting an ideological control over Western thinking. It chimed well with the post 9-11 atmosphere.
This final goal of the proponents of "the new anti-Semitism" was so successful because it could be easily conflated with other ideas associated with America's war on terror, such as the clash of civilisations. If it was "us" versus "them", then the new anti-Semitism posited from the outset that the Jews were on the side of the angels. It fell to the Christian West to decide whether to make a pact with good (Judaism, Israel, civilisation) or evil (Islam, Osama bin Laden, Londonistan).
He will do so by issuing his own interpretation of the Geneva Conventions in an executive order and by relying on questionable Justice Department opinions that authorize such practices as exposing prisoners to hypothermia and prolonged sleep deprivation. Under the compromise agreed to yesterday, Congress would recognize his authority to take these steps and prevent prisoners from appealing them to U.S. courts. The bill would also immunize CIA personnel from prosecution for all but the most serious abuses and protect those who in the past violated U.S. law against war crimes.As for that phony fuck McCain. he was on the Today show spouting and blowing about the great, big fucking deal he'd worked out with Bush. Then he started in with "the ACLU doesn't want us to interrogate terrorists" bullshit. You'd think that a guy who supposedly suffered torture at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors would say something like, "I went through this and I don't think anyone should have to suffer torture." But he didn't. He started in the attacks on the ACLU and "liberals" and sounded just like every other asshole Republican politician.
WashingtonPost.com
Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner said in Iowa on Monday that Democrats have taken the wrong approach in arguing against tax cuts enacted under President Bush, singling out former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's campaign as a reason the message did not resonate in 2004.This guy's a Democrat? Sounds like elephantshit to me. And it looks like the Democratic Party's got another Republican mole à la Zell Lieberman.
In order to appeal to more voters, the party ought to avoid alienating wealthier Americans, Warner told members of the Greater Des Moines Partnership in Des Moines at the outset of a day of meetings in the lead-off caucus state.
"Even though the Bush tax cuts only applied to the top 2 percent of Americans, what I think the Kerry campaign missed was that the other 98 percent of Americans still aspired to get to the point in their life where they could qualify for the tax cuts."
Warner said wealthier Americans may be willing to support what would essentially be an income-tax increase, but only if it is portrayed as part of a fiscal strategy that includes trimming government waste and curbing spending.
THOMAS BEAUMONT, The Des Moines Register
Yes, in some small way this is good news. But the clause in the sentense beginning "The survey also found..." which I have emphasized does cause one to pause. What kind of concept is guarantees too many rights? And where did these kids come up with such nonsense? Do these little assholes want to do away with...now let's see what does the First Amendment guarentee?NEW YORK A large-scale survey by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has found that while high school students in the U.S. are more knowledgable about the First Amendment than they were two years ago, they are increasingly divided on whether they think it goes too far in protecting the right to free speech.
In general, today's high school students are more likely to take classes that teach about the First Amendment than they were two years ago, and more students now support protections for journalists. Students also increasingly support the right of student publications to report without oversight from school officials.
The survey also found, however, that students today also think that the First Amendment guarantees too many rights,(emphasis added) and there is a growing polarization between students who support the fundamental principle of the law and those who do not.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.So which of these guarenteed rights do some of the little assholes in the story want to delineate? Freedom of religion? That's my quess. Or how about "...petition the government for a redress of grievances"? What rights should be eliminated, you moronic little twerps?
Washington, D.C. - Leaders of the labor movement and the centrist Democratic Leadership Council on Wednesday put aside historic differences and pledged to push for federal legislation that would allow workers to sign up for unions without a formal election.
The labor leaders said the breakthrough was spearheaded by Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, the chairman of the council who's exploring a bid for the Democratic nomination for the presidency.
The bill backed by Vilsack is called the Employee Free Choice Act, which is co-sponsored by 43 members of the Senate, led by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and 215 members of the House, led by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.
Under the proposal that labor leaders and the council favors, once a majority of employees have signed cards asking to organize, the National Labor Relations Board would investigate and allow the workers to be represented by a union.
I am the primary sponsor of the FairTax, legislation that will repeal all corporate and individual income taxes, payroll taxes, self-employment taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes and gift taxes - and replace it with a revenue-neutral personal consumption tax.I'm no economist but every one I've read says that these kinds of tax schemes are no good. It's essentially desigend to forever shift the tax burden of the country off the nation's wealthiest and onto the backs of the poor. I mean, just look at that list! Exports increase, keep more take-home pay, weages increase. Where does this Linder come up with this bullshit?
The FairTax Act:Repeals all corporate and individual income taxes, payroll taxes, self-employment taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes and gift taxes.Imposes a revenue-neutral personal consumption tax on all new goods and services at the point of final purchase. Business-to-business transactions and used products (which have already been taxed) are not subject to the sales tax. Rebates the sales tax on all spending up to the poverty level.
Results of the FairTax:Dramatically reduce the costs of goods and services by 20 to 30 percent.Allows you to keep 100 percent of your paycheck, pension, and Social Security payments. Gross Domestic Product will increase by almost 10.5 percent in the first year after enactment. Compliance costs would decrease by 90 percent. Real investment would initially increase by 76 percent relative to the investment that would be made under present law. While this increase would gradually decline, it remains 15 percent higher than under the existing tax structure. Exports would increase by 26 percent initially and would remain more than 13 percent above the level under the current tax system. Real wages will increase. Increases incentives to work by as much as 20 percent in many households, leading to higher economic growth and efficiency. Interest rates will fall 25 to 35 percent.
# In virtually every state in the union, the bottom 80 percent of taxpayers would face much higher taxes under a sales tax. Nationwide, these tax increases wouldBut this chimera won't go away. It sounds so simple and that's what makes it attractive to simple minds.
average about $3,200 a year.
# Put another way, on average the 80 percent of Americans in the middle- and lowerincome ranges would pay 51 percent more in sales taxes than they now pay in the federal taxes that the proposed national sales tax would replace.
# In contrast, the best-off one percent of all taxpayers nationwide would get average tax reductions of about $225,000 each per year.
Besides shifting the tax burden away from the well off and onto low- and middle income taxpayers, a national sales tax would also shift aggregate taxes away from better off states and onto poorer states and states with a high proportion of elderly residents.
# Overall, we calculate that 13 states and the District of Columbia would pay less in
aggregate taxes under a national sales tax, while the remaining 37 states would
pay more.
# Of the total amount that is shifted among states, just over half of the total
winnings would go to California and New York (even though most Californians and
New Yorkers would nevertheless pay considerably higher taxes.)
Perhaps more importantly, polling from individual races show that the issue of immigration is not the force many believe it to be. The survey Joel Wright conducted for this site and the Courage Campaign looking into why Francine Busby lost in the special election in California's 50th congressional district found that "contrary to many pundits, both moderates and Independents were far more drawn to progressive immigration messaging of the sort Busby gave rather than the harsh, punitive rhetoric from conservatives in the district."This is the same sort of Democratic hubris that doomed the Democrats in the abortion debate: The Supreme Court has decided, we don't need to address the issue poltically to strenghten the ruling, the opposition is small, weak, on the radical fringe and easily ignored. When Roe v. Wade was handed down by the Burger Court in 1973, essentially legalizing abortion, the so-called pro-life movement limited to a handful of Catholics. How times have changed.
Given the relatively small number of voters who plan to base their vote this fall on immigration above all issues, the underwhelming track record of the issue and the fact that there are serious questions about the efficacy of the GOP's political strategy on the issue, I am just not sold on this notion that immigration will decide control of the House in the next Congress.
MyDD.com
Disney/ABC's spokesman now admits that at least one key scene from its 9/11 "documentary" was simply made up.ABC, owned by Disney, is working hand in glove with the Bush administration on this one. As the Republicans ramp up "the war on
Berger, portrayed as a pasty-faced time-server by Kevin Dunn (Col. Hicks in “Godzilla”) freezes in dithering apprehension when a manly and virtuous CIA agent played by Donnie Wahlberg radios in from the wilds of Afghanistan to say that he and his noble band of local tribesmen have Osama bin Laden within sight and begs for the green light to terminate him with extreme prejudice. In the film, the line goes dead before Berger offers any reply.....
So when the post-screening question-and-answer session began, Ben-Veniste stood to say that the Berger-bashing scene didn’t square with the research he and the other commissioners conducted. “There was no incident like that in the film that we came across. I am disturbed by that aspect of it,” Ben-Veniste, a loyal Democrat, told the panel, which included both the producer and the commission’s GOP chairman, former Gov. Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey.
Berger, reached by phone after the screening, seconded Ben-Veniste’s criticism. “It’s a total fabrication,” he said tersely. “It did not happen.”
That is not likely to prevent the film from being embraced far and wide among Bush supporters. Even before its airdate, the show is being hailed as a breakthrough in the conservative blogosphere. One blogger marveled in an interview with scriptwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh that “one unbelievable sequence shows how . . . Sandy Berger . . . actually hung up the phone on the CIA agent on the ground.”
Ah yes, Disney/ABC's misinformation is already spreading. And now, it seems, the standard Disney/ABC is applying to their tv show is to strive for "reasonable accuracy" when educating American schoolkids about what happened on September 11 and how it happened.
Reasonably accurate?
Is that like saying Saddam Hussein had something to do with September 11, and Iraq had WMD? Hasn't America had enough hedging about accuracy regarding September 11 and the war on terror?
But hey, so what if Disney/ABC makes the after-school-special version of the largest mass murder of Americans in decades, if not ever? What counts to Disney/ABC isn't the truth, it's that the murder of 3,000 Americans be good entertainment.
The former North Carolina senator stopped in the river community of Hampton, Ill., as part of the 39th annual Quad Cities Salute to Labor Picnic, sponsored by the Rock Island County Democratic Party and Quad City Federation of Labor. It was Edwards' second stop of the day, coming from New Hampshire before heading to Springfield, Mo.
While there have been divisions among competing unions and a decline in the percentage of the work force that is organized, Edwards said there are 15 million service sector jobs in the nation and another 10 million likely to be added over the next few years.
While Edwards said there is potential for growth in the service sector, he admitted that the labor movement faces significant challenges because of strong resistance from employers.
"Whether those jobs pay the minimum wage or a strong middle-class salary depends on whether they are organized or not," he said.
The Des Moines Register.com
NEW YORK The Toledo Blade, in the midst of a six-month labor dispute with several unions locked out, on Sunday published the salaries of most of their union workers -- in a full-page ad in the Sunday paper.How fucking generous, $59,561 for a copy editor per year plus benefits. Wow. Of course, no mention of seniority and level of education. I'll bet there are auto mechanics making more than this! But the economy and the current Zeitgeist of the country are so fucked up that Blade management probably scored points with the pinheads slaving at Wal Mart.
The full-page also listed benefits for everyone from reporters to sales people.
According to a report on local TV station WTOL, "The Blade said it wanted to show readers how 'generous' the newspaper has been to its employees."
The ad related that top scale salaries ranged from $33, 576 for a customer service rep to $59,561 for a copy editor. It also described the benefits package, including pension plan and vacation time.
Editor & Publisher.com
That is another feature of today's economy — a decline in union membership in the private sector and a loss of bargaining power by workers generally, whether unionized or not.I actually thought about going,
They can change the laws to make it easier for workers to organize and perhaps to give employers incentives to recognize unions.
They can create disincentives for corporations to overcompensate their CEOs, so that gains in worker productivity might translate into better wages instead of fatter executive bonuses.
Want change? Target leaders, not Wal-Mart
I was e-mail invited by the WakeUpWalMart.com organization putting together the "protest." But I ususally don't do those sorts of thing because I feel it does no good. How can you shame a company, Wal Mart, that has no shame? You might as well piss in the ocean to protest the tide. But here was Evan Bayh and a gaggle of local union officials getting wheeled around Des Moines saying, "Shame on you, Wal Mart." Pathetic.The Industrial Age moved workers into the manufacturing sector, where, thanks to the combined strength of unions and the progressive policies of the federal government, employees shared in the nation's prosperityWhat's the common theme here? I think it's pretty fucking obvious! The Democratic Party has done nothing, nothing! for organized labor for waaaay to long.
After a tumultuous beginning in which big business, often with the assistance of government, colluded to break the back of organized labor, unions finally established themselves, helping to guarantee workers a fair share of productivity gains. Under the New Deal, federal labor laws secured base-line wages and overtime pay for more than a 40-hour work week, among many other vital protections.
The authors of Nine Shift: Work, Life and Education in the 21st Century, say people will work at home with intranets replacing physical offices. They see the collapse of the traditional organizational pyramid and a shrinking inequality between rich and poor.
I don't know if these scenarios are likely. They certainly are not in the short run. But I know one thing for certain. If organized labor doesn't start to reassert itself and if the federal government doesn't start looking out for workers again, an economically secure middle class will become a relic of 20th century utopianism. The slide has already begun.
Workers feel the squeeze
I was surprised, reading the editorial “Health-care cost spiral: Time of change, September 3, 2006, that The Register advocates expanding Medicare to more Americans, not just the elderly.I'll know if they're going to publish it if they call.
This is the same solution to the country’s health-care woes that macroeconomist, and Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Dean Baker proposes in “The Conservative Nanny State”, downloadable free at
http://www.conservativenannystate.org/.
Medicare enrolment should be open to all adult working individuals and families whose income level falls above the poverty limit but below $300,000 per year. And administrative costs being a fraction of privately owned health-care plans, the accrued savings could be passed along to businesses and their employees alike. In addition Medicare’s size gives it enormous bargaining power to both hold down the cost of health-care providers and medications while lending an element of certainty for employers and employees, as premiums could never capriciously be raised or revoked or benefits denied.
Yet neither the Republican Party, with scary-stories of a “big government bureaucracy,” nor the Democratic Leadership Council, whose health-care reform plans look like a “crazy” quilt, want their health-care industry bankrollers to compete in a market economy where they might fail.
Pay the government $200 and [hog confinement owners are] protected from much bigger fines for possible violations of federal air-pollution laws.I won't dignify calling the owners of such hog confinement "farmers," because they're not. They are, however, businessmen, many of whom are in the habit of hiring undocumented workers at bargain basement wages to tend their operations. So now big hog confinement operations will legally pollute, since, as the story relates, the majority of hog producers ignored EPA regulations until being sued by neighbors. In federal courts the neighbors and environmental groups tended to win.
In exchange for the liability protection, farms agreed to pay $200 to $100,000 in what are classified as civil penalties. The size of the penalties varied according to the size of the operation.The Sunday Des Moines Register.com
James Baker, the former U.S. secretary of state who is heading a group looking into U.S. policy in Iraq, met with Iraq's deputy prime minister Friday in Baghdad.
Baker sat down with Salam al-Zubaie to discuss protection of Iraq's borders, national reconciliation, peace chances and international donations, Iraqi authorities said.
Baker, a Republican, co-chairs the bipartisan Iraq Study Group with Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman. They are carrying out an independent analysis of the situation in Iraq.
Several members of Congress urged that such a report be done. A final report will be issued to Congress, the White House and the public.
CNN.com
But five members of the U.S. House of Representatives indicated Friday that real legislative reform of the nation's immigration laws likely will have to wait at least until after the November midterm elections and possibly until a new president takes office in 2009.Truer words by a U.S. Representative were never spoken. And Jackson-Lee is correct, the Republican leadership wants to keep the "illegal" immigrant pot boiling like the abortion pot, gay marriage and Second Amendment "rights."
"It is probably doubtful that anything will happen between now and November," said Iowa's 5th District congressman Steve King, a Republican. "Unless something dramatic happens that would cause some kind of major shift, I wouldn't be surprised if there won't be any change until a new president is elected."
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, a Texas Democrat, also predicted that immigration legislation is likely to be addressed well after the current Congress ceases to exist.
"I have seen no evidence that the Republican leadership wants this to be resolved anytime soon," Jackson-Lee said. "That is not what they are interested in achieving with this roadshow."
The Des Moines Register
Posts
All Comments
