Monday Open Thread

14
  by: Colorado Pols Mon September 24, 2012 at 3:28 PM MDT

“Are we to paint what’s on the face, what’s inside the face, or what’s behind it?”

–Pablo Picasso


Full story: Monday Open Thread

14 Community Comments, Facebook Comments

  1. dwyer says:
    Mon September 24, 2012 at 4:14 PM MDT

    You kiddies may not know the history of the Medical Family Leave Act.  It was one of legendary Representative Pat Schroder’s shinning achievements.

    It makes it law that employees may have 12 week leave for family reasons, without losing their jobs.  It is a godsend to new mothers.  Prior to this law, new mothers were lucky if they could take two weeks off for the birth and care of an infant.

    This is the history:  The Democratically controlled Congress passed this legislation twice during the Reagan administration and twice Reagan vetoed the bill.

    Congress passed the law, again, during Bush I and again, it was vetoed by the President. It was passed again in 1992 and it was the first bill signed by PResident Clinton in 1993.

    Many businesses do not like this law.  So, it is imperative that Romney be asked specifically if he would sign legislation to eliminate this law.

    • Barron X says:
      Mon September 24, 2012 at 7:23 PM MDT

      I was thinking it only applied to businesses with 50 or more employees.  

      And this only requires that employees be granted leave, it doesn’t require employers to pay employees while on leave, does it ?  

      • parsingreality says:
        Mon September 24, 2012 at 7:35 PM MDT

        Most importantly, of course, it means that the job will be there when the person gets back.

        Some companies expand the mandatory list of relatives and events on their own in order to create goodwill with the employees.  Costs them nothing except a bit of inconvenience.

        I think there are nations in Europe that require the wages to be paid even while absent.  Maybe someone knows more.  

      • BlueCat says:
        Mon September 24, 2012 at 9:21 PM MDT

        Which of the other righties is ever correct, much less on two whole counts at once? :)

  2. ProgressiveCowgirlProgressiveCowgirl says:
    Mon September 24, 2012 at 9:55 PM MDT

    Nephew is still in NICU but is breathing much better and likely to be discharged (on take-home oxygen) this week. Had his first normal feeding yesterday and did great.

    Please donate blood, especially if you are O-! My sister wouldn’t be walking out of the hospital alive if there hadn’t been O- donor blood on hand.

    • BlueCat says:
      Mon September 24, 2012 at 11:41 PM MDT

      and, thanks to no longer being a spring chicken I think I weigh enough to be allowed to donate.  Never made the cut in my short skinny 20s, 30s or 40s. Still short but no longer 96 pounds.

      I’ll look into donating after Yom Kippur.  Want to go into the full fast at full strength.  All the best to your nephew and sister.  

  3. ProgressiveCowgirlProgressiveCowgirl says:
    Mon September 24, 2012 at 9:55 PM MDT

    Nephew is still in NICU but is breathing much better and likely to be discharged (on take-home oxygen) this week. Had his first normal feeding yesterday and did great.

    Please donate blood, especially if you are O-! My sister wouldn’t be walking out of the hospital alive if there hadn’t been O- donor blood on hand.

  4. BlueCat says:
    Mon September 24, 2012 at 11:53 PM MDT

    CEO pay has increased 725 percent over three decades, while worker pay has essentially remained flat.(my emphasis. Pretty mind blowing) A new study challenges a conventional practice corporations use to justify skyrocketing CEO pay, which is that without it, CEOs would leave for competitors. According to the study by the University of Delaware’s Charles M. Elson and Craig K. Ferrere:

    It is increasingly apparent that the pay awarded to chief executives is becoming profoundly detached from not just the pay of the average worker, but also from the companies they run. Offsetting the external focus, which is so heavily relied upon today, with internal metrics and internal benchmarking may help to curb the persistent escalation. We hope that if directors are no longer constrained by notions of “competitive” pay, which are driven by the false belief that CEOs are interchangeable, they may have the space to rationalize the upward spiraling pay ratchet and deliver what is more shareholder acceptable compensation.

    http://www.nationofchange.org/…

    So 725 percent to nothing isn’t enough?  They need more tax cuts and any decade now they’ll really, honest to goodness, this time they really mean it, not just kidding this time, start producing better paying jobs?  It would be funny if it wasn’t evidence of how pathetically stupid the American public has been all these years and how much American kids are suffering from the decades of stupidity.  We don’t even offer the good old American upward mobility advantage to them any more. Something like ten countries now beat us there, too, while we beat many more than that in the gap between the haves and the rest.

  5. DaftPunkDaftPunk says:
    Tue September 25, 2012 at 1:41 AM MDT

    Romney’s wife, Ann, was in attendance, and the candidate spoke of the concern he had for her when her plane had to make an emergency landing Friday en route to Santa Monica because of an electrical  malfunction.

    “I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were,” Romney said. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no – and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem.

    http://www.latimes.com/news/po…

  6. Phoenix RisingPhoenix Rising says:
    Tue September 25, 2012 at 1:46 AM MDT

    I’ve written about Rep. Rivera (R, FL-26) in the past in open threads, but he deserves an update for this one…

    Rivera, if you don’t remember, got a fake Democratic primary challenger to enter the race in order to go after 2010 challenger Joe Rivera. It is alleged he paid for the challenger’s campaign off the books. Using a mailing firm his own campaign (and other Republican campaigns) often used. Paying in “secret” cash payments left clandestinely at the mailing company. Which the company employees have reported to the papers and the FBI.

    When asked about it, Rivera denied it, and produced a campaign finance statement from the fake challenger. That no-one else including the SEC had seen yet. The fake challenger’s campaign manager (a self-described “conservative bad girl”) was also implicated and was supposed to meet with Federal attorneys (agreed on as an alternative to coming before a grand jury). And then she disappeared (and has not been heard from since).

    That short novel brings us to today’s installment…

    Apparently those cash payments came as the result of invoices sent by the mailing company. Addressed to David Rivera. Now in the hands of the FBI. Rivera apparently wasn’t too happy with being named on the invoices and asked that his name be removed from the invoices – with Wite-Out!

    The incompetence here is staggering. And the sad part is, he still leads in the polls.  (Much like Rep. William “Cold Cash” Jefferson led in his re-election bid after those allegations surfaced; people like them some incumbents…)

  7. parsingreality says:
    Tue September 25, 2012 at 6:39 AM MDT

    Two times he brought in planes in distress to safe landings, smoke in the cockpit and worse.

    Made the Houston news one night.

    A couple of years ago I got to tell some grandkids about their Dad’s heroism, that hadn’t heard the stories.  

    Sadly, the bottle meant more than his career.  Tom, as he knows, will always be welcome and embraced if he were to appear on my doorstep.

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