The study, Apple’s High Effective Tax Rate Obscures Foreign Tax Benefits, shows how tech giant Apple pays low taxes and keeps this fact from public view. Like Google and General Electric—two companies that have been in the news this year because of their aggressive tax planning—Apple takes advantage of lax U.S. tax rules to shift profits out of the United States and greatly reduce its tax bill. But unlike these companies, Apple also takes advantage of flexible accounting rules that allow it to report large U.S. tax expense to shareholders and the public even though those taxes actually have not (and may never be) paid to the IRS.
If I, as a private citizen, were to hide taxable income off-shore in order to avoid paying taxes on it, I would be jailed for Income Tax evasion. I guess multi-billion dollar corporations don't have to abide by the same rules us "little people" do.
Here's another article detailing tax breaks given to Apple to establish a server farm in North Carolina. Up to $46 million will be saved in taxes. How many employees do you think they will create with that $46 million dollar break? And if the taxes are paying the employees salaries, why the hell doesn't the state just employ them directly and put them to work doing something that benefits the public directly, and not a billion dollar corporation? You hear "Government doesn't create jobs!" rhetorical bullshit constantly, if the government is subsidizing the fucking jobs, and without said subsidies those jobs wouldn't exist, how does that even make logical sense? It seems to me that the government is the only one creating jobs via tax cuts. Problem is the bulk of private sector isn't holding up their end of the bargain and actually hiring people with those breaks, they're pocketing them and blaming them on unfair regulations and other nonsense...
By that argument, since when does the U.S. have any obligation towards Apple? I'm sure they get hefty tax cuts being here, asking for something in return is just too fucking much?
It's not like Apple went from a garage to the juggernaut it is today overnight. This country facilitated their growth, agreements were made, concessions granted, taxes cut...and now that they've reached the peak of their market share and power, what's the response? "Ha ha, fuck you America, we're building all our shit in China! We have no obligation to you!! But thanks for all the breaks you cut us as we were growing to the point we are today, I guess..."
It was the U.S. that afforded these companies to make their billions, and now that times are tough and we're asking for a little in return, they're all giving us the finger and running like locusts to the next economy to suck off of, and once that economy is all tapped out, they'll just up and move again. If we let them, that is.
A good place to start would be to impose steep tariffs on all imported manufactured goods and use that money to subsidize jobs here in the States. Once they can't bring their crap in from China for nothing, you'll see how fast these factories all start re-opening here, and as far as prices skyrocketing, you know what? It's time to call their bluff because I don't believe for one fucking second that any manufacturer would sabotage their own business by pricing themselves out of the market.
You hear people bitching and complaining about "entitlements" among the younger generation and how people feel they are "entitled to success", yet all these megacorps and captains of industry that obviously feel they are "entitled" to cut any and all corners in the drive to maximize the profits of a select few "entitled" people at the top to the detriment of everyone at the bottom, you don't ever hear a fucking peep about those "entitled" attitudes.
Apparently it's okay to be "entitled" if you have a lot of zeros in your bank account, but the serfs need to just be happy that they have a job at all. We're coming full circle back to fucking Feudalism; instead of nobility running the show we have a corporatocracy...
Um, I can, and do, use metric all the time, as well as standard English measurements. I haven't met anyone educated that wasn't familiar with metric and completely capable of working in it as well.
Again with that stupid "We'll never be able to afford it if Americans make it!!!!" argument.
Back when we made shit here, there was actual demand for labor, and people made a decent wage for the time doing even the most menial of jobs because employers actually had to compete for workers. Consequently, the buying power of the dollar was enormous compared to where it is today.
My grandfather came back from Korea and got a job as a truck driver, and that earned him enough money to buy (and pay off) a modest home in Philadelphia; support himself, his wife, and their four children; buy a new car every few years; pile the family in the car and drag them all over the country every summer on vacation; put something away for his children's college educations and his retirement. All on single salary earned with a fucking high school diploma. And to top it off, he was actually treated like a fucking human being by his boss! He regularly had the boss and his family over for dinner, and when there were problems in my grandfather's personal life, like when my grandmother got cancer the first time and had to be hospitalized, not only did his boss give him as much time as he needed to deal with it, no questions asked, he came and visited them in the fucking hospital. The guy ran a trucking company, and my grandfather being gone effected his bottom line, but that wasn't nearly as important to him as the fact that one of his valued employees was in trouble.
Contrast that to the average job a high school graduate can get these days. Hell, contrast that to most any job these days. I've had jobs where you can't even get sick without the threat of losing your job, or at the very least, getting put right to the top of a "layoff" list. Look at all the fucking huge retail chains that deliberately hire two part-time employees instead of one full-time one just to get around having to offer them insurance or any benefits of any kind. There are whole towns in this country now where the only major employer is Walmart, a huge proponent of doing that shit.
People talk about class warfare like it's something new, but the fact is, the war's been raging since fucking 1980, they just called it "trickle-down economics" and "globalization". Now that the other side is finally waking up to that fact and starting to resist in earnest, now come the threats about moving overseas or "competitiveness" or "incentive to hire Americans" and "American labor is too expensive!" and all the other bullshit.
This country was at it's strongest economically when the middle-class was at it's strongest economically. Cutting their tax rate a few percentage points isn't going to turn the U.S.A. into fucking Xanadu. We need to make it financially untenable for a manufacturer to base 95% of production in foreign slave markets and bring the shit here and sell it for premium prices, but those manufacturers spend their hard earned profits making sure that will never, ever happen by lobbying the fuck out of our government.
Sub-Zero/Wolf Appliance here in Wisconsin did similar. A few years ago, the owner called a company-wide meeting and told everyone they could either take a 20% pay cut or they would get laid off. When the employees balked, the owner told them he would just fire them all and move the plant to Kentucky. Understandably, this scared people to death, what with mortgages and all. When employees started looking for ways to cut costs without having to cut their salaries that much (and found some) and presented them to the owner, he basically said "This isn't about money; the economy is soft right now, and I'm going to use this opportunity to increase my profit margin by cutting your wages. Don't like it, there's the door."
There have been some businesses that truly have been hit hard by this economy, but there are some real slimeball fuckheads that are basically just extorting the fact that people are desperate for work and will do almost anything to keep their jobs. If the minimum wage were gone tomorrow, we'd all be making illegal immigrant strawberry-picking slave wages, and we're supposed to cut taxes on "the job creators"? Please.
Fuck 'em all. I don't give a shit about copyright anymore. I hate it all.
Goddamn right.
I have no more respect for the MAFIAA than I do for the fucking Mexican Cartels or any other criminal organization at this point. The fact that our government legitimizes their bullshit is immaterial to me. After SOPA/PIPA and now this Megaupload bullshit, I've got a new motto: Pirate all the things!
With the sheer number of unsecured networks within a few block radius of my house (according to the wifi scanner on my phone as I drove my mother around to look at Christmas lights a month or so ago), it would be trivial for me to go wardriving and participate via someone else's connection completely.
There was even a handful in my apartment building within range of my unit until recently, but it seems someone finally taught them how to password protect a wireless access point. Pity, it was a good diagnostic tool to see if my internet issues were just me or building-wide before I spent an hour of my life on the phone with fucking Charter...
What about the other side of the coin? The person that ain't got shit worth taking? It's hard to penalize someone living with 3 other people in a shitty apartment, driving a mid 90's beater buick, working at Walmart.
Jail time for something like this will be negligible; the real pain comes in the associated legal fees, and when you have like no assets, there ain't much to lose. The average person doing this doesn't give a fuck about their credit score, or their mortgage payments, or what their boss is going to think. They fucking hate their boss' guts.
1 in 4 however collect social security. That number is staggering. It is not a good thing. Where for other races it is about 1 in 10. How do we fix this?
Education, which leads to increased economic security, which leads to better life choices, which leads to better health, which leads to less people collecting social security.
I know a lot about it because I was the one that had to get up at 2 AM to drive her to the fucking E.R. with her son in tow. I worked a night shift the night before and a morning shift the next day so I had all of two hours sleep in a 36 hour period.
The night made a bit of an impression. Between her screaming and crying, and her son crying, and no fucking sleep, I thought I was going to go fucking crazy.
Of those who do care about gay rights, and are opposed, what percent are so opposed that it would play into considerations of which company to work for?
Probably a lot less than the people that would actively boycott the company if they decided to actively promote the right-wing "family values" crap...for instance, I won't shop at Target due to their large donations to candidates and PACs that actively fight gay marriage initiatives, and I try to boycott any other business I know of that does, as well, and I certainly wouldn't work for one.
I'd be curious to see how many people here would admit to boycotting Microsoft over this alone, even as a consumer, let alone a potential employee. I doubt there will many...
Why would I even try to? There's nothing wrong with having a disdain for religion. I was simply pointing out that my disdain wasn't limited to Christianity (since so often simply questioning Christianity online leads to me being called a "Christian-hater" and sometimes, oddly enough, a Muslim or terrorist sympathizer)...
If all you are looking for is a legal certificate that gives you legal rights (next of kin, etc) why does it have to be called "marriage"?
If marriage is a religious institution, why are all marriages not civil unions in the eyes of the law? The fact that they're not seems like a preference towards the religious institution.
How would you feel if marriage was forever stricken from the record and henceforth all marriages were legally civil unions in the eyes of the law, the marriage part only pertaining to your religious observances within the church? Because most people that are against gay marriage seem to have a problem with that, too. Not saying you do, just curious if you recognize the double standard in that attitude held by some of your fellow Christians.
Most of the states (and the federal government) do not even recognize civil unions. Clearly there is a civil rights issue here. Besides, when did the Christian church trademark the term "marriage" anyway? I "marry" two joints together when I am working in my shop, did I just confer some religious meaning to the glue?
I'm not trying to be antagonistic, and you are totally entitled to your beliefs, but the whole religious argument to gay marriage seems being called marriage seems like a stretch to me. Did the term even originate in Christianity? Besides, why are Christians even legally be able to divorce if the act in itself is so sacred? Most Christian churches even recognize divorcees (I haven't heard of anyone excommunicated lately over it, anyway).
It was over ten years ago, and while I may have the procedure's names confused, I stand by my statement concerning the options given to her. I was in the room when the doctor was talking to her. This occurred in Wisconsin, she was visiting from Florida, at St. Mary's Hospital in Madison, WI. I do not know who her insurer was, either. All I know is that she had insurance in Florida.
This was a private, out-of-network hospital, but as she was already on the hook for a hefty bill just for stepping into the emergency room, the other option (just go to another hospital and get another hefty bill for stepping foot into their also out-of-network emergency room) so she dealt with the pain and took her plane home to get the procedure done.
As for her seeking previous treatment for the "chronic urological problems", well, again, when you're a single mother with a two-year-old 2,000 miles away from family, I'm prepared to cut her a little slack if maybe she didn't run off to the doctor the second it burned when she pee'd for the first time. She was on antibiotics for a UTI already, she got those at the free clinic here in town since no one else would even see her for non-emergency care, but that obviously wasn't enough. It wasn't until the pain became unbearable that she even went to the ER.
When's the last time you made a non-emergency doctors appointment? Because around these parts, you're looking at a wait of at least 6 weeks, and that's with insurance at your own in-network provider; my sister-in-law's already been waiting 6 weeks already for her appointment dealing with her Fibromyalgia, and her appointment is in the middle of fucking February). When my step-sister called around she was told "Sorry, here's the address for the Free Clinic, good luck!". A few days later she was crying every time she used the bathroom...
Call shenanigans if you like; I know what I saw.
Your "third-world butcher" comment doesn't even apply, so I'll just go ahead and ignore that...
No, they should all be locked up in Federal "Pound Me In The Ass" Prison, but as the people that make the laws are the people that benefit from that little loophole, I suppose that will never happen...
Hell, even if by some miracle these assholes did get locked up, you know there would be pardons handed down somewhere. They take care of their own...
You absolutely can be a Christian and ignore all of the kill this, don't eat this, don't fuck that, etc. from the Bible.
Show me where, in the Bible, it says "go ahead and ignore whichever parts of this book you disagree with (or is inconvenient to follow, or whatever excuse one comes up with)."
I have no problem with people believing what they want, and I take no issue with religion per se, I just don't understand how one reconciles the fact that they are ignoring part of the work, but embracing others. If I say, "Hey, that Christ guy was pretty cool, he really seems like he loved his fellow man" but don't believe in God, or Christ's divinity, or any of the other tenets of the religion, am I a Christian? How does a Christian ignore the whole "And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you" (Leviticus 11:10) but embrace the "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." (Leviticus 18:22) without wondering why? Do Christians not see the arbitrary nature of their varied beliefs?
When confronted with these questions, a lot of Christians tell me that one shouldn't question, one should accept these things on faith, but how the hell can anyone understand anything without questioning it?
And no, obviously I don't want parents to start stoning their kids. But my question is, if we're free to ignore that, why the fuck is the whole "marriage is between a man and a woman!!!!!!" think so fucking important that there needs to be secular laws made to enforce it?
Because her plane ticket was a week later, so her options were to be in crippling pain for a week, pay a bunch of money to move her ticket up and be in pain for a day or two while changing planes multiple times (with a 2 year old in tow), or have the traditional surgery and be bedridden for weeks (while still needing to reschedule her plane ticket, costing her more money, and still needing to figure out what she was gonna do with the two year old while she was convalescent). The option that was in her best interests was off the table due directly to ability to pay issues.
Point is, it was in her best interests to get the endoscopic surgery (the doctor himself even admitted this) but they were not going to do it because she couldn't demonstrate a sufficient ability to pay for it to the satisfaction of the hospital. Instead of doing what was best for her, they gave her a scrip for heavy narcotics (that she couldn't even take, again, 2 year old child to take care of) and told her good luck.
Slashdot Mirror
The study, Apple’s High Effective Tax Rate Obscures Foreign Tax Benefits, shows how tech giant Apple pays low taxes and keeps this fact from public view. Like Google and General Electric—two companies that have been in the news this year because of their aggressive tax planning—Apple takes advantage of lax U.S. tax rules to shift profits out of the United States and greatly reduce its tax bill. But unlike these companies, Apple also takes advantage of flexible accounting rules that allow it to report large U.S. tax expense to shareholders and the public even though those taxes actually have not (and may never be) paid to the IRS.
Source.
If I, as a private citizen, were to hide taxable income off-shore in order to avoid paying taxes on it, I would be jailed for Income Tax evasion. I guess multi-billion dollar corporations don't have to abide by the same rules us "little people" do.
Here's another article detailing tax breaks given to Apple to establish a server farm in North Carolina. Up to $46 million will be saved in taxes. How many employees do you think they will create with that $46 million dollar break? And if the taxes are paying the employees salaries, why the hell doesn't the state just employ them directly and put them to work doing something that benefits the public directly, and not a billion dollar corporation? You hear "Government doesn't create jobs!" rhetorical bullshit constantly, if the government is subsidizing the fucking jobs, and without said subsidies those jobs wouldn't exist, how does that even make logical sense? It seems to me that the government is the only one creating jobs via tax cuts. Problem is the bulk of private sector isn't holding up their end of the bargain and actually hiring people with those breaks, they're pocketing them and blaming them on unfair regulations and other nonsense...
But for crystal meth.
No, actually, I mean English measurements.
That's where they originated, and that's what they're called. The fact that England uses metric now is besides the point.
By that argument, since when does the U.S. have any obligation towards Apple? I'm sure they get hefty tax cuts being here, asking for something in return is just too fucking much?
It's not like Apple went from a garage to the juggernaut it is today overnight. This country facilitated their growth, agreements were made, concessions granted, taxes cut...and now that they've reached the peak of their market share and power, what's the response? "Ha ha, fuck you America, we're building all our shit in China! We have no obligation to you!! But thanks for all the breaks you cut us as we were growing to the point we are today, I guess..."
It was the U.S. that afforded these companies to make their billions, and now that times are tough and we're asking for a little in return, they're all giving us the finger and running like locusts to the next economy to suck off of, and once that economy is all tapped out, they'll just up and move again. If we let them, that is.
A good place to start would be to impose steep tariffs on all imported manufactured goods and use that money to subsidize jobs here in the States. Once they can't bring their crap in from China for nothing, you'll see how fast these factories all start re-opening here, and as far as prices skyrocketing, you know what? It's time to call their bluff because I don't believe for one fucking second that any manufacturer would sabotage their own business by pricing themselves out of the market.
You hear people bitching and complaining about "entitlements" among the younger generation and how people feel they are "entitled to success", yet all these megacorps and captains of industry that obviously feel they are "entitled" to cut any and all corners in the drive to maximize the profits of a select few "entitled" people at the top to the detriment of everyone at the bottom, you don't ever hear a fucking peep about those "entitled" attitudes.
Apparently it's okay to be "entitled" if you have a lot of zeros in your bank account, but the serfs need to just be happy that they have a job at all. We're coming full circle back to fucking Feudalism; instead of nobility running the show we have a corporatocracy...
Um, I can, and do, use metric all the time, as well as standard English measurements. I haven't met anyone educated that wasn't familiar with metric and completely capable of working in it as well.
Again with that stupid "We'll never be able to afford it if Americans make it!!!!" argument.
Back when we made shit here, there was actual demand for labor, and people made a decent wage for the time doing even the most menial of jobs because employers actually had to compete for workers. Consequently, the buying power of the dollar was enormous compared to where it is today.
My grandfather came back from Korea and got a job as a truck driver, and that earned him enough money to buy (and pay off) a modest home in Philadelphia; support himself, his wife, and their four children; buy a new car every few years; pile the family in the car and drag them all over the country every summer on vacation; put something away for his children's college educations and his retirement. All on single salary earned with a fucking high school diploma. And to top it off, he was actually treated like a fucking human being by his boss! He regularly had the boss and his family over for dinner, and when there were problems in my grandfather's personal life, like when my grandmother got cancer the first time and had to be hospitalized, not only did his boss give him as much time as he needed to deal with it, no questions asked, he came and visited them in the fucking hospital. The guy ran a trucking company, and my grandfather being gone effected his bottom line, but that wasn't nearly as important to him as the fact that one of his valued employees was in trouble.
Contrast that to the average job a high school graduate can get these days. Hell, contrast that to most any job these days. I've had jobs where you can't even get sick without the threat of losing your job, or at the very least, getting put right to the top of a "layoff" list. Look at all the fucking huge retail chains that deliberately hire two part-time employees instead of one full-time one just to get around having to offer them insurance or any benefits of any kind. There are whole towns in this country now where the only major employer is Walmart, a huge proponent of doing that shit.
People talk about class warfare like it's something new, but the fact is, the war's been raging since fucking 1980, they just called it "trickle-down economics" and "globalization". Now that the other side is finally waking up to that fact and starting to resist in earnest, now come the threats about moving overseas or "competitiveness" or "incentive to hire Americans" and "American labor is too expensive!" and all the other bullshit.
This country was at it's strongest economically when the middle-class was at it's strongest economically. Cutting their tax rate a few percentage points isn't going to turn the U.S.A. into fucking Xanadu. We need to make it financially untenable for a manufacturer to base 95% of production in foreign slave markets and bring the shit here and sell it for premium prices, but those manufacturers spend their hard earned profits making sure that will never, ever happen by lobbying the fuck out of our government.
Sub-Zero/Wolf Appliance here in Wisconsin did similar. A few years ago, the owner called a company-wide meeting and told everyone they could either take a 20% pay cut or they would get laid off. When the employees balked, the owner told them he would just fire them all and move the plant to Kentucky. Understandably, this scared people to death, what with mortgages and all. When employees started looking for ways to cut costs without having to cut their salaries that much (and found some) and presented them to the owner, he basically said "This isn't about money; the economy is soft right now, and I'm going to use this opportunity to increase my profit margin by cutting your wages. Don't like it, there's the door."
There have been some businesses that truly have been hit hard by this economy, but there are some real slimeball fuckheads that are basically just extorting the fact that people are desperate for work and will do almost anything to keep their jobs. If the minimum wage were gone tomorrow, we'd all be making illegal immigrant strawberry-picking slave wages, and we're supposed to cut taxes on "the job creators"? Please.
Fuck 'em all. I don't give a shit about copyright anymore. I hate it all.
Goddamn right.
I have no more respect for the MAFIAA than I do for the fucking Mexican Cartels or any other criminal organization at this point. The fact that our government legitimizes their bullshit is immaterial to me. After SOPA/PIPA and now this Megaupload bullshit, I've got a new motto: Pirate all the things!
Fuck 'em.
With the sheer number of unsecured networks within a few block radius of my house (according to the wifi scanner on my phone as I drove my mother around to look at Christmas lights a month or so ago), it would be trivial for me to go wardriving and participate via someone else's connection completely.
There was even a handful in my apartment building within range of my unit until recently, but it seems someone finally taught them how to password protect a wireless access point. Pity, it was a good diagnostic tool to see if my internet issues were just me or building-wide before I spent an hour of my life on the phone with fucking Charter...
What about the other side of the coin? The person that ain't got shit worth taking? It's hard to penalize someone living with 3 other people in a shitty apartment, driving a mid 90's beater buick, working at Walmart.
Jail time for something like this will be negligible; the real pain comes in the associated legal fees, and when you have like no assets, there ain't much to lose. The average person doing this doesn't give a fuck about their credit score, or their mortgage payments, or what their boss is going to think. They fucking hate their boss' guts.
Kodos is a union shill and terrorist sympathizer! Vote for KANG!!
If that's the case than I must be a leet haxor with this NoScript plugin...
1 in 4 however collect social security. That number is staggering. It is not a good thing. Where for other races it is about 1 in 10. How do we fix this?
Education, which leads to increased economic security, which leads to better life choices, which leads to better health, which leads to less people collecting social security.
Diabetes, for instance, occurs in the African-American community at twice the rate it does in non-Hispanic Whites. They are also 30% more likely to die from Heart Disease and 40% more likely to have high-blood pressure. It stands to reason that there'd be a lot of S.S. claimants given the nature of these diseases and the associated health issues surrounding them, such as renal failure, heart failure, etc...
I know a lot about it because I was the one that had to get up at 2 AM to drive her to the fucking E.R. with her son in tow. I worked a night shift the night before and a morning shift the next day so I had all of two hours sleep in a 36 hour period.
The night made a bit of an impression. Between her screaming and crying, and her son crying, and no fucking sleep, I thought I was going to go fucking crazy.
Believe what you want...
Of those who do care about gay rights, and are opposed, what percent are so opposed that it would play into considerations of which company to work for?
Probably a lot less than the people that would actively boycott the company if they decided to actively promote the right-wing "family values" crap...for instance, I won't shop at Target due to their large donations to candidates and PACs that actively fight gay marriage initiatives, and I try to boycott any other business I know of that does, as well, and I certainly wouldn't work for one.
I'd be curious to see how many people here would admit to boycotting Microsoft over this alone, even as a consumer, let alone a potential employee. I doubt there will many...
You hide it very well.
Why would I even try to? There's nothing wrong with having a disdain for religion. I was simply pointing out that my disdain wasn't limited to Christianity (since so often simply questioning Christianity online leads to me being called a "Christian-hater" and sometimes, oddly enough, a Muslim or terrorist sympathizer)...
If all you are looking for is a legal certificate that gives you legal rights (next of kin, etc) why does it have to be called "marriage"?
If marriage is a religious institution, why are all marriages not civil unions in the eyes of the law? The fact that they're not seems like a preference towards the religious institution.
How would you feel if marriage was forever stricken from the record and henceforth all marriages were legally civil unions in the eyes of the law, the marriage part only pertaining to your religious observances within the church? Because most people that are against gay marriage seem to have a problem with that, too. Not saying you do, just curious if you recognize the double standard in that attitude held by some of your fellow Christians.
Most of the states (and the federal government) do not even recognize civil unions. Clearly there is a civil rights issue here. Besides, when did the Christian church trademark the term "marriage" anyway? I "marry" two joints together when I am working in my shop, did I just confer some religious meaning to the glue?
I'm not trying to be antagonistic, and you are totally entitled to your beliefs, but the whole religious argument to gay marriage seems being called marriage seems like a stretch to me. Did the term even originate in Christianity? Besides, why are Christians even legally be able to divorce if the act in itself is so sacred? Most Christian churches even recognize divorcees (I haven't heard of anyone excommunicated lately over it, anyway).
It was over ten years ago, and while I may have the procedure's names confused, I stand by my statement concerning the options given to her. I was in the room when the doctor was talking to her. This occurred in Wisconsin, she was visiting from Florida, at St. Mary's Hospital in Madison, WI. I do not know who her insurer was, either. All I know is that she had insurance in Florida.
This was a private, out-of-network hospital, but as she was already on the hook for a hefty bill just for stepping into the emergency room, the other option (just go to another hospital and get another hefty bill for stepping foot into their also out-of-network emergency room) so she dealt with the pain and took her plane home to get the procedure done.
As for her seeking previous treatment for the "chronic urological problems", well, again, when you're a single mother with a two-year-old 2,000 miles away from family, I'm prepared to cut her a little slack if maybe she didn't run off to the doctor the second it burned when she pee'd for the first time. She was on antibiotics for a UTI already, she got those at the free clinic here in town since no one else would even see her for non-emergency care, but that obviously wasn't enough. It wasn't until the pain became unbearable that she even went to the ER.
When's the last time you made a non-emergency doctors appointment? Because around these parts, you're looking at a wait of at least 6 weeks, and that's with insurance at your own in-network provider; my sister-in-law's already been waiting 6 weeks already for her appointment dealing with her Fibromyalgia, and her appointment is in the middle of fucking February). When my step-sister called around she was told "Sorry, here's the address for the Free Clinic, good luck!". A few days later she was crying every time she used the bathroom...
Call shenanigans if you like; I know what I saw.
Your "third-world butcher" comment doesn't even apply, so I'll just go ahead and ignore that...
No, they should all be locked up in Federal "Pound Me In The Ass" Prison, but as the people that make the laws are the people that benefit from that little loophole, I suppose that will never happen...
Hell, even if by some miracle these assholes did get locked up, you know there would be pardons handed down somewhere. They take care of their own...
You absolutely can be a Christian and ignore all of the kill this, don't eat this, don't fuck that, etc. from the Bible.
Show me where, in the Bible, it says "go ahead and ignore whichever parts of this book you disagree with (or is inconvenient to follow, or whatever excuse one comes up with)."
I have no problem with people believing what they want, and I take no issue with religion per se, I just don't understand how one reconciles the fact that they are ignoring part of the work, but embracing others. If I say, "Hey, that Christ guy was pretty cool, he really seems like he loved his fellow man" but don't believe in God, or Christ's divinity, or any of the other tenets of the religion, am I a Christian? How does a Christian ignore the whole "And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you" (Leviticus 11:10) but embrace the "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." (Leviticus 18:22) without wondering why? Do Christians not see the arbitrary nature of their varied beliefs?
When confronted with these questions, a lot of Christians tell me that one shouldn't question, one should accept these things on faith, but how the hell can anyone understand anything without questioning it?
And no, obviously I don't want parents to start stoning their kids. But my question is, if we're free to ignore that, why the fuck is the whole "marriage is between a man and a woman!!!!!!" think so fucking important that there needs to be secular laws made to enforce it?
Because her plane ticket was a week later, so her options were to be in crippling pain for a week, pay a bunch of money to move her ticket up and be in pain for a day or two while changing planes multiple times (with a 2 year old in tow), or have the traditional surgery and be bedridden for weeks (while still needing to reschedule her plane ticket, costing her more money, and still needing to figure out what she was gonna do with the two year old while she was convalescent). The option that was in her best interests was off the table due directly to ability to pay issues.
Point is, it was in her best interests to get the endoscopic surgery (the doctor himself even admitted this) but they were not going to do it because she couldn't demonstrate a sufficient ability to pay for it to the satisfaction of the hospital. Instead of doing what was best for her, they gave her a scrip for heavy narcotics (that she couldn't even take, again, 2 year old child to take care of) and told her good luck.
I wholeheartedly agree...
Guess I'd better get a few adapters...
Nope, don't mind at all. Have a nice day :)