Think of it as something your 2 kids can share to surf the net. Cheap, low cost, and adding that second kid for "free". Of course the screwed up Licensing ruins the whole thing. The system is great for people at home...after all it's only 1 INSTALLED copy!!! but for businesses the "grey area" makes this useless because you can't fight the BSA when they see you have 12 of these!!
As far as making a server... you ain't seen MS licensing prices for their terminal services have you...it ends up being cheaper to buy Dells and throw them away because selling Windows and Office is what MS is all about. The software + accounting costs $500+ per seat[and buy a "thin client] to "repliate" what your $499 dell can do [but you gain a little back on ease of support].
Like Hexus said...as a LINUX box this would rock!!!
their goal is to wipe out SK if they can't win! SK's capital city is within conventional artillary range of the NK guns. NK just needs to be able to soften up the SK lines [with lots of US army guys] for the first 5 mile or so on the other side of the neutral zone so they have half a chance at not getting invaded by ground. They've gotta take the gamble that china will hold back from invading because the US troops will be there first. I don't see US & china fighting side by side...so one of us will have to take it while the other sits out...and you know "cowboy george" will be first in! On the other hand, China will also prevent the US from using nukes...even if NK does...under the threat that china swoops in and clean the whole thing up [read snatches NK & SK and doesn't give them back!]
Unlike Saddam, NK has a mostly "primitive" army... very high percentage of foot soilders so you can't just knock out a few bases like in Iraq... we'd have to fight man-to-man...and the US "tv generation" doesn't have the stomach for THAT type of war...you can't even hide the enemy casualties by saying you took out "bases" you gotta kill the enemy one-at-a-time [1 millon troops!] even with all our US "army toys" that's a gruesome toll...you can't tell CNN NOT to show such wholesale slaughter of an "inferior" force. Even our own troops will be "damaged" by carrying out such gruesome orders...either we lob cruise missles on troops only armed with machine guns, or we send in gunships & paratroopers to "mow" down waves upon waves of enemy troops... The US position in the world will go from bad to "most feared"!
Well thanks goodness that the NK dictators didn't pass and "constitutions" like that!!! I mean they'd be in big trouble..
Seriously, NK is run by a dying regime, their people are starving due to the crazy dictators in charge spending every penny on building up the army. The entire country is in a fight/flight psycology...there's only 2 choices... much of the pouplation has friends/family on the other side of the neutral zone and any war at this point would at least allow some of them to get back together when it's all over. Much like Saddam, the NK leadership is counting on goading "cowboy Bush" to taking the "first shot" so they can rain all hell on everyone. Only they have a "million man" army lined up and ready to go at SK.
Back OT I'd love to see what the Japaneese companies have hiding in their basements!!! given their specialties in WW2 I'd be surprised if the Govt just allowed their companies to be gutted like that. Of course with the "giant killer robot" fettish they seem to have in POP culture, i'll bet there's prototypes lurking in somebodies basememen!
Who cares how "accurate" the V@ was? that's like comparing a "model T" to an indy race car, you completely miss the point! Germany was the only country DURING the war to have WORKING ballistic missiles in their arsenal... Much like the US atomic program, it was mearly the fact that it worked at all that caused mearly FEAR of the weapon to be enough to achive their goals. It was the first "long range" weapon ever created...before the V2 you had to use bombers or ships and get within several miles of your targets with some kind of supporting force...the V2 fundamentally changed the rules of war, you could shoot from the saftey of another well-fortified city!...the germans just didn't get the full benifit from it!
Look at how the US fights wars now... the WW2 bombers had to be nearly with in small-arms fire to have a reliable bombing run... now we fire cruise missles from 1000Mi away without "endangering" our own troops. We'd have never "invaded" iraq or afganastan without the V2's decendants.
The Germans were WAY ahead of their time in weapons development...had they [and japan] not picked the wrong fights [russia/ pearl harbor] the US/ russia would never have entered the war...and Germany would have easily finisihed the job.
but they declared a state of emergency and ordered parts of the state evacuated... Technically if your employer's business was IN one of those zones they were breaking a legal order by even occupying the building. business aren't homes..they have no legal right to defy authorities on an evacuation order!
sounds just like my situation last year...almost to the $$. Except that my Wife has been one of the "laid off" so she got to experience one of the "new jobs" that pay less than 5 years ago for the same thing. It acually has ended up cheaper for her not to work and cut corners at home. My "real" household income actually went DOWN every year for 4 years except this one. That was AFTER we had the children & bought the house because we thought things were "stable"...haha!
Sorry about over-reacting...every now and then there seems to be some antagonistic "super christian" pop up with Bible-Belt rhetoric... usually that the Dems are "evil" because they support abortion or some other grim staple of our lives.
Your poll was cute, but I am a christian...and I find calling every political canidate "anti-christ" is childish namecalling...like I said, I belive things won't be revealed until certian events have happened...and I don't plan to be here!
I find the name calling to be counter-productive to REAL debate about why George or Jerry is Good/Bad for the country. Personally, I've started rating canidates by their children rather than their words. It gives a better sense where their priorities REALLY are! I originally had a pretty low opinion of Clinton, but he grew on me percisesly because Chelsea has turned out to be a very respectable young woman...with the kind of hard work and keeping her nose clean that demonstrates she's a very honorable person...as opposed to Bush who's the child of one president [who aided breaking the law] bragging about snorting coke...with daughters picked up for MIP while he's in the whitehouse!! If a guy can't demonstrate leadership to his own children why the hell should he lead the country? GB seems like a PHB right out of dilbert... surrounding himself with extreme managers and hiding from the public behind his title when they get out of control. It's typical of republicans leadership to appoint "executive dropouts" for president who'll toe the party line straight to hell and back. Reagan was the only notable exception in recent history...mostly because he was truely a wise, OLD person... he knew to combat the "evil communists" but also when to put down the rhetoric and publicly welcome new, flexible russian leaders...GB doesn't have that wisdom. he's got all the words, but not the sense to use the right tool for the job.
That's scary on so many levels...either kids will become used to such unamerican rules being forced upon them and the govt will get out-of-control [more?], or in another 10 years we're going to have a nasty conflict of interest on our hands when these kids have enough political power to retaliate against this type of stuff... either way it's only going to get worse before it gets better.
I'm not saying RH & Suse are bad, but fundamentally they are only a small step from MS..they take "raw" linux and repackage it to be "nicer". As oss grows they'll never be able to run around and "fix" all the things different about their distro versus "pure" [not to flame] distros like Debian.
personally, one of the really cool things I find about OSS is how it's "alive" software rather than dead in a box on the shelf. One of the fundamental differences between OSS and the rest of the software world is that fact. MS has even stated it's "dream" is to have softwaer as a service...so that it can do what a distro like Gentoo does right now... be instantly up-to-date with every package!
granted, it's not perfect, but the shift to software-as-a-service is actually further in distros like gentoo or debian than it is at MS...Linux is very close to being bootable "from the internet" [build a machine and plug it into the wall!] which is a trick ONLY OSS can ever do.
No, Debian isn't the "only real" oss, but it IS the unoffical flagship distro by which all other distros are measured in the community. For commercial software vendors that want to "support Linux" the constant ignoring of Debian as "supported" is getting more than a little insulting.
I'm not trying to Karma whore...it comes naturally!
The article was suggesting IBM offically support Debian for their "closed source" software! It's only a logical thing to do...because of all the distros Debian is the base for many...it's the "offical" [if there can be such a thing] linux in the community...not to support Debian is a slap to the very core of the linux/oss/gnu movement!
I mentioned Gentoo because it is also a distro that matches the very core of what OSS is all about. Gentoo is the "rawest" form of OSS trying to stay as close to original sources as possible..that's great for support issues because fixes benifit everyone...Gentoo should definately be on IBMs "short list" of distros to support.
I wasn't "bagging out" RH & Suse for being commercial, but in a comparison of stability and flexibility versus Debian stable for corperate use Debian is at LEAST their equal in every way...including support. turn it around, Why do commercial software vendors dis Debian so much versus RH or Suse?
Sorry to babble about OSS, but Why AREN'T software companies supporting Debian outright to run their software? Debian by it's own definition strives to be the most "oss/free" of distros. Why can large corps benifit from linux but NOT consider Debian...as a enterprise distro there's not really anything wrong with it. Again, why is IBM, the "proponent of Linux" so squeemish about "eating the dogfood" and going full OSS with the Debian distro?
NO, that's the point...if I'm BUYING software, then no, I can't easily move to another linux. When RH stops support of the version my software requires I've got no out in my support contract to use the machine for anything else! If the vendor supports RH3 and I put on Suse it may work, but I just "voided" my expensive support contract. It might work on RH4..it might not be supported. In reality Debian is the ONLY distro [because Gentoo doesn't actually host code] that attempts to handle upgrades, downgrades and cross platform PUBLICALY in the open. Sure, RH and SuSe do the same thing, but it's not really encouraged that.
Note: I'm not a Debian Zelot, but it's the only distro that truely matches the REAL needs of enterprise class software. It just happens to be striving for being "pure" OSS... the goals are not neccessaraly tied together, but debian strives to tie stability, flexiblity, and openness in a pretty good balance. It should become the TARGET for linux software and let the other [non-free] distros play keep up...again, with Debian it's not hard..it's even encouraged to start your own mini-distro...again making it the very best choice.
but still Debian's release cycle is just about right at the long end...while allowing you to "roll-in" what new features you need. They could do a better job speeding up the next stable but You the user can use as much advanced stuff as you want...if a company supports something like vanilla "Debian Stable" then you have a FAR better chance of it working properly than even with RH or SUSE. The Kicker is that companies have to learn to play nice with others...nearly impossible in the SW industry.
Like another poster far up said, "it's a class war" the middle class hasn't figured it out yet! Most of these professions make "good" money for a single person for the straight pay...but it's not enough to afford a home or family on alone. So in effect we've LOST a lot since the 70's when 1 job was enough for most households. OT is what makes "jobs" into "middle class lifestyles" for many people. The "suits" look at the average pay for workers and see the big checks they write and want to "quit" not needing the hours, but writing the checks!
Without OT most of these careers put the middle-class families back into qualifying for food stamps!!! It takes $50k to "comfortably" raise a family in a nice house with new cars in the drive and sports for the kids. People like me can live in a smaller house, buy cheap used cars, and hold the kids back...but it doesn't contribue to the big corps bottom lines.... Want to see um get WORSE...just wait and see!!!
This is a formal rule to strip away a lot of those suits. That's specifically mentioned in the DoLs reasons for changing the rules. IT does get specifically singled out still with the "$27/hr rule" in addition to the other new changes. mostly it allows companies to classify a HUGE percentage of "skilled" jobs as "exempt"... the DoL even mentions professions like Police and nursing [cause you gotta go to school]... where conditions are already "near slave labor"
Like i said in a post above, it's an attept to make "current industry practice" formally legal instead of looking at the horrible abuse going on. the "comp time" provisions are horribly underwritten with almost no attention to ensuring workers rights to USE them!
no, the issue was brougt up by corperate lobbiests because they are breaking the current former rules so badly 75% of them are in real danger of being sued at any time a lawyer wants some quick cash! This cause for rule change was entirely corporation driven...it was only obvious to the rulemakers to raise the minimum...they could probably be held criminally liable if they didn't at least account for 25 years of inflation in the new rules!
From reading various articles directly on the Dept of Labor's site, it's clearly obvious the intent was to make "current industry practice" formally legal not to look out for the "worker".
try %250 would almost bring it in to balance...it's that much cheaper to work an employee an extra 10 hours a week than pay to hire another one!! In short, people work 20 hours of OT [at 60% of "real" pay, accounting for benifits] to help the company out....and that's not "good enough" for the corperate bastards anymore!
Nurses, firefighters, police, X-ray techs... tool and die, cnc, drafting... midrange office workers, research assistants....auto mechanics, pilots, aircraft mechanics... and pretty much all of the remaining IT sector.
Many many people at the top of these professions can clear 100K at fortune 500 companies even though the base pay top out only $25-30/ hour. Note: these are people that WORK all day...walking the beat, tending patients, drawing prints, building machine tools or installing computer hardware...these aren't "office" jobs...the companies are billing by the hour here!!! [the corps just don't want to PAY by the hour!] They work THAT much OT...routinely in these professions OT can be 50%+ of ones take home pay!!! But that's earned...but trying to make kids and mariage happen while working 60-70 hour weeks... [7 day weeks for 6 months straight, skipping vacations for 2-3 years...] Many of these people work longer hours than most 3rd world'rs do!
it's the middle class...hard work and long hours for good pay and a nice life...it's what AMERICA is all about!!!
but OT is already a great deal for most companies...after all it's "on demand" work hours from existing trained employees for the flat 1.5 hours of pay...benifits are already figured in the 40 hour "regular" pay. While the first 40 hours pay of a $15/hr employee is more like $35 to the company after taxes and benifits, the OT time is just $23.50 per hour...that's a 40% savings per labor unit...
Most business owners are basicly cheap bastards...I know every week my old boss demanded 10-20 hours OT/weeks from the production workers [on no notice at going home time] to get the widgets out on time because HE overbooked ["help the business"...or else], but he swore up and down the next week when he wrote the checks for their fair pay they EARNED! OT is a "standard" contract...just like any other business has...this is just one side trying to take advantage of the economic situation!
They passed an rule to add the blockage to another spending bill...because right now it's just an "executive rule" buy the dept of labor... the prez is threatening to block the whole law if the wording stays!
but there are many non-union employees in the same jobs...more than that it's now a heavy negotiation point for the companies that you work at... when the NEXT union contracts come up there's going to be HUGE backlash...
Many police and nurses fall exactly in this group, some are union but just as many not. They are paid hourly because they work hourly...tending patients or "walking" the beat... Many local govts are actively engaging in union breaking...I know my town has been for years. This is just more ammo to fuel the fire. Realize that the "flat" pay for these jobs is only about $35k for cops in my area and $40k for nurses [after 4 years of college and 5+ years experience!]....now the workers make about 1/2 again [50-60k] that much due to OT and are horribely understaffed already working 50-60 hour weeks... That takes most of these jobs from being "happy" middle class [house, 2.5 kids, dog, & soccer mom] to legally qualifying for food stamps doing the same job and having the same life!!!! I guess that's OK... After all, we all know the corps are footing all the tax bills so far...**right**.. Hint...if you make less than 50k [household] with a wife and kids you don't pay sqat for taxes...far less than you consume...it's the 60k+ crowd that really pays the taxes...and you just cut THEIR pay!!!!
Well, the low limit was $250 a week [~$8.50/hr]! I know many small resturant/mall store managers working 60 hours a week for that salary!!! it's particularly popular in the Pizza business... often the drivers make more than the store managers!!!
Let's put it this way, the situation is SO bad that the new limit of $450 [`$11/hr] is STILL less than paying these people OT!!!
yep, that's YOUR job their after right there... As soon as this straightens out, they'll be HAPPY to bring you onboard for 40 hours straight time pay...but of course the SAME work hours!!! That 60% pay cut is gonna hurt!!!
The last several post were the reason the companies lobbied for the rule change. The general intent was to clarify who was offically "salary" because there are far too many lawsuits..
of course the Dept of Labor didn't ask the RIGHT question! "Why are there so many sueable cases to begin with?" The companies mearly lobbied they were being sued too much....the DoL failed to do their job for LABOR and see the wide scale abuse taking place...thanks George!
Fact of the matter is that most americans [better than 50%] DON'T live their teen/young adult years boozing and whoring...it's a myth perpetuated by the media "rockstars" and politicans that want to cover for their inapproperiate actions... If you don't have "moral fiber" when your young it doesn't really count when you "find" it later in life...that's why the republicans have become SO oppressive. That's why these "wise" people are passing laws at a record rate that make THEIR "youthful indiscressions" 5-10 year felonies when THEY got a break!
If somebody at 16, 18, or 21 can't control themselves what makes you foolishly think that at 50 years old, with a million dollars in the bank and a high-priced layer on speed dial they're going to be MORE responsible? Let's face it, somebody like me never, ever did drugs, drank before I was 21, or stayed out late getting in trouble with the cops... sure I made mistakes...got married too young and too late, but that was a moral choice that had to be made at 20 to stick with the girl. but I'm still with the same [first!] girl 11 years later. I got my first [only] speeding ticket at 25 for 5 over. Those are "mistakes" not felonius criminal acts! If your ANY age and still committing FELONIES you have a serious moral problem...and no business running anything.
That's an AVERAGE american...and I know 100 other people just like me! Unfortunately, the truely moral, reasonable people who should be running the country [i.e. Howard Dean types!] want nothing to do with the recent kind of backstabbing, entrapping media politics that passes for "government". The first moral choice we make is to stay the hell away from THOSE type of people because they only bring you down to their level!
The AVERAGE american is very poorly represented in our government. The average americans are far more wise than they let on...somebody could do quite well starting a new party if they could get us off the fence and back in charge of the country!!!
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Think of it as something your 2 kids can share to surf the net. Cheap, low cost, and adding that second kid for "free". Of course the screwed up Licensing ruins the whole thing. The system is great for people at home...after all it's only 1 INSTALLED copy!!! but for businesses the "grey area" makes this useless because you can't fight the BSA when they see you have 12 of these!!
As far as making a server... you ain't seen MS licensing prices for their terminal services have you...it ends up being cheaper to buy Dells and throw them away because selling Windows and Office is what MS is all about. The software + accounting costs $500+ per seat[and buy a "thin client] to "repliate" what your $499 dell can do [but you gain a little back on ease of support].
Like Hexus said...as a LINUX box this would rock!!!
Unlike Saddam, NK has a mostly "primitive" army... very high percentage of foot soilders so you can't just knock out a few bases like in Iraq... we'd have to fight man-to-man...and the US "tv generation" doesn't have the stomach for THAT type of war...you can't even hide the enemy casualties by saying you took out "bases" you gotta kill the enemy one-at-a-time [1 millon troops!] even with all our US "army toys" that's a gruesome toll ...you can't tell CNN NOT to show such wholesale slaughter of an "inferior" force. Even our own troops will be "damaged" by carrying out such gruesome orders...either we lob cruise missles on troops only armed with machine guns, or we send in gunships & paratroopers to "mow" down waves upon waves of enemy troops... The US position in the world will go from bad to "most feared"!
Seriously, NK is run by a dying regime, their people are starving due to the crazy dictators in charge spending every penny on building up the army. The entire country is in a fight/flight psycology...there's only 2 choices... much of the pouplation has friends/family on the other side of the neutral zone and any war at this point would at least allow some of them to get back together when it's all over. Much like Saddam, the NK leadership is counting on goading "cowboy Bush" to taking the "first shot" so they can rain all hell on everyone. Only they have a "million man" army lined up and ready to go at SK.
Back OT I'd love to see what the Japaneese companies have hiding in their basements!!! given their specialties in WW2 I'd be surprised if the Govt just allowed their companies to be gutted like that. Of course with the "giant killer robot" fettish they seem to have in POP culture, i'll bet there's prototypes lurking in somebodies basememen!
Look at how the US fights wars now... the WW2 bombers had to be nearly with in small-arms fire to have a reliable bombing run... now we fire cruise missles from 1000Mi away without "endangering" our own troops. We'd have never "invaded" iraq or afganastan without the V2's decendants.
The Germans were WAY ahead of their time in weapons development...had they [and japan] not picked the wrong fights [russia/ pearl harbor] the US/ russia would never have entered the war...and Germany would have easily finisihed the job.
but they declared a state of emergency and ordered parts of the state evacuated... Technically if your employer's business was IN one of those zones they were breaking a legal order by even occupying the building. business aren't homes..they have no legal right to defy authorities on an evacuation order!
just kidding!
sounds just like my situation last year...almost to the $$. Except that my Wife has been one of the "laid off" so she got to experience one of the "new jobs" that pay less than 5 years ago for the same thing. It acually has ended up cheaper for her not to work and cut corners at home. My "real" household income actually went DOWN every year for 4 years except this one. That was AFTER we had the children & bought the house because we thought things were "stable"...haha!
Your poll was cute, but I am a christian...and I find calling every political canidate "anti-christ" is childish namecalling...like I said, I belive things won't be revealed until certian events have happened...and I don't plan to be here!
I find the name calling to be counter-productive to REAL debate about why George or Jerry is Good/Bad for the country. Personally, I've started rating canidates by their children rather than their words. It gives a better sense where their priorities REALLY are! I originally had a pretty low opinion of Clinton, but he grew on me percisesly because Chelsea has turned out to be a very respectable young woman...with the kind of hard work and keeping her nose clean that demonstrates she's a very honorable person...as opposed to Bush who's the child of one president [who aided breaking the law] bragging about snorting coke...with daughters picked up for MIP while he's in the whitehouse!! If a guy can't demonstrate leadership to his own children why the hell should he lead the country? GB seems like a PHB right out of dilbert... surrounding himself with extreme managers and hiding from the public behind his title when they get out of control. It's typical of republicans leadership to appoint "executive dropouts" for president who'll toe the party line straight to hell and back. Reagan was the only notable exception in recent history...mostly because he was truely a wise, OLD person... he knew to combat the "evil communists" but also when to put down the rhetoric and publicly welcome new, flexible russian leaders...GB doesn't have that wisdom. he's got all the words, but not the sense to use the right tool for the job.
That's scary on so many levels...either kids will become used to such unamerican rules being forced upon them and the govt will get out-of-control [more?], or in another 10 years we're going to have a nasty conflict of interest on our hands when these kids have enough political power to retaliate against this type of stuff... either way it's only going to get worse before it gets better.
personally, one of the really cool things I find about OSS is how it's "alive" software rather than dead in a box on the shelf. One of the fundamental differences between OSS and the rest of the software world is that fact. MS has even stated it's "dream" is to have softwaer as a service...so that it can do what a distro like Gentoo does right now... be instantly up-to-date with every package!
granted, it's not perfect, but the shift to software-as-a-service is actually further in distros like gentoo or debian than it is at MS...Linux is very close to being bootable "from the internet" [build a machine and plug it into the wall!] which is a trick ONLY OSS can ever do.
No, Debian isn't the "only real" oss, but it IS the unoffical flagship distro by which all other distros are measured in the community. For commercial software vendors that want to "support Linux" the constant ignoring of Debian as "supported" is getting more than a little insulting.
The article was suggesting IBM offically support Debian for their "closed source" software! It's only a logical thing to do...because of all the distros Debian is the base for many...it's the "offical" [if there can be such a thing] linux in the community...not to support Debian is a slap to the very core of the linux/oss/gnu movement!
I mentioned Gentoo because it is also a distro that matches the very core of what OSS is all about. Gentoo is the "rawest" form of OSS trying to stay as close to original sources as possible..that's great for support issues because fixes benifit everyone...Gentoo should definately be on IBMs "short list" of distros to support.
I wasn't "bagging out" RH & Suse for being commercial, but in a comparison of stability and flexibility versus Debian stable for corperate use Debian is at LEAST their equal in every way...including support. turn it around, Why do commercial software vendors dis Debian so much versus RH or Suse?
Sorry to babble about OSS, but Why AREN'T software companies supporting Debian outright to run their software? Debian by it's own definition strives to be the most "oss/free" of distros. Why can large corps benifit from linux but NOT consider Debian...as a enterprise distro there's not really anything wrong with it. Again, why is IBM, the "proponent of Linux" so squeemish about "eating the dogfood" and going full OSS with the Debian distro?
Note: I'm not a Debian Zelot, but it's the only distro that truely matches the REAL needs of enterprise class software. It just happens to be striving for being "pure" OSS... the goals are not neccessaraly tied together, but debian strives to tie stability, flexiblity, and openness in a pretty good balance. It should become the TARGET for linux software and let the other [non-free] distros play keep up...again, with Debian it's not hard..it's even encouraged to start your own mini-distro...again making it the very best choice.
but still Debian's release cycle is just about right at the long end...while allowing you to "roll-in" what new features you need. They could do a better job speeding up the next stable but You the user can use as much advanced stuff as you want...if a company supports something like vanilla "Debian Stable" then you have a FAR better chance of it working properly than even with RH or SUSE. The Kicker is that companies have to learn to play nice with others...nearly impossible in the SW industry.
Without OT most of these careers put the middle-class families back into qualifying for food stamps!!! It takes $50k to "comfortably" raise a family in a nice house with new cars in the drive and sports for the kids. People like me can live in a smaller house, buy cheap used cars, and hold the kids back...but it doesn't contribue to the big corps bottom lines.... Want to see um get WORSE...just wait and see!!!
Like i said in a post above, it's an attept to make "current industry practice" formally legal instead of looking at the horrible abuse going on. the "comp time" provisions are horribly underwritten with almost no attention to ensuring workers rights to USE them!
From reading various articles directly on the Dept of Labor's site, it's clearly obvious the intent was to make "current industry practice" formally legal not to look out for the "worker".
try %250 would almost bring it in to balance...it's that much cheaper to work an employee an extra 10 hours a week than pay to hire another one!! In short, people work 20 hours of OT [at 60% of "real" pay, accounting for benifits] to help the company out....and that's not "good enough" for the corperate bastards anymore!
Many many people at the top of these professions can clear 100K at fortune 500 companies even though the base pay top out only $25-30/ hour. Note: these are people that WORK all day...walking the beat, tending patients, drawing prints, building machine tools or installing computer hardware...these aren't "office" jobs...the companies are billing by the hour here!!! [the corps just don't want to PAY by the hour!] They work THAT much OT...routinely in these professions OT can be 50%+ of ones take home pay!!! But that's earned...but trying to make kids and mariage happen while working 60-70 hour weeks... [7 day weeks for 6 months straight, skipping vacations for 2-3 years...] Many of these people work longer hours than most 3rd world'rs do!
it's the middle class ...hard work and long hours for good pay and a nice life...it's what AMERICA is all about!!!
Most business owners are basicly cheap bastards...I know every week my old boss demanded 10-20 hours OT/weeks from the production workers [on no notice at going home time] to get the widgets out on time because HE overbooked ["help the business"...or else], but he swore up and down the next week when he wrote the checks for their fair pay they EARNED! OT is a "standard" contract...just like any other business has...this is just one side trying to take advantage of the economic situation!
They passed an rule to add the blockage to another spending bill...because right now it's just an "executive rule" buy the dept of labor... the prez is threatening to block the whole law if the wording stays!
Many police and nurses fall exactly in this group, some are union but just as many not. They are paid hourly because they work hourly...tending patients or "walking" the beat... Many local govts are actively engaging in union breaking...I know my town has been for years. This is just more ammo to fuel the fire. Realize that the "flat" pay for these jobs is only about $35k for cops in my area and $40k for nurses [after 4 years of college and 5+ years experience!]....now the workers make about 1/2 again [50-60k] that much due to OT and are horribely understaffed already working 50-60 hour weeks... That takes most of these jobs from being "happy" middle class [house, 2.5 kids, dog, & soccer mom] to legally qualifying for food stamps doing the same job and having the same life!!!! I guess that's OK... After all, we all know the corps are footing all the tax bills so far...**right**.. Hint...if you make less than 50k [household] with a wife and kids you don't pay sqat for taxes...far less than you consume...it's the 60k+ crowd that really pays the taxes...and you just cut THEIR pay!!!!
Let's put it this way, the situation is SO bad that the new limit of $450 [`$11/hr] is STILL less than paying these people OT!!!
yep, that's YOUR job their after right there... As soon as this straightens out, they'll be HAPPY to bring you onboard for 40 hours straight time pay...but of course the SAME work hours!!! That 60% pay cut is gonna hurt!!!
great post!!!
of course the Dept of Labor didn't ask the RIGHT question! "Why are there so many sueable cases to begin with?" The companies mearly lobbied they were being sued too much....the DoL failed to do their job for LABOR and see the wide scale abuse taking place...thanks George!
If somebody at 16, 18, or 21 can't control themselves what makes you foolishly think that at 50 years old, with a million dollars in the bank and a high-priced layer on speed dial they're going to be MORE responsible? Let's face it, somebody like me never, ever did drugs, drank before I was 21, or stayed out late getting in trouble with the cops... sure I made mistakes...got married too young and too late, but that was a moral choice that had to be made at 20 to stick with the girl. but I'm still with the same [first!] girl 11 years later. I got my first [only] speeding ticket at 25 for 5 over. Those are "mistakes" not felonius criminal acts! If your ANY age and still committing FELONIES you have a serious moral problem...and no business running anything.
That's an AVERAGE american...and I know 100 other people just like me! Unfortunately, the truely moral, reasonable people who should be running the country [i.e. Howard Dean types!] want nothing to do with the recent kind of backstabbing, entrapping media politics that passes for "government". The first moral choice we make is to stay the hell away from THOSE type of people because they only bring you down to their level!
The AVERAGE american is very poorly represented in our government. The average americans are far more wise than they let on...somebody could do quite well starting a new party if they could get us off the fence and back in charge of the country!!!