Employers got into providing health insurance to employees as a way to increase employee compensation when the government changed the tax code and made it a deductables business expense and tax-free for the worker in the 1940s.
Even more odd is that you think that the fiscal insanity was caused by fiat currency, when in fact, most was caused by lack of regulation, mortgage originators who had no fiscal stake in the process, leading to mortgages to people who never should have them, and the insanity ne plus ultra - the 50 year morgage. a favorite of 80 year olds.
And it was all federally backed to help make sure everyone had their chance at "the American Dream"!
My personal favorite was the 110% mortgage - loaning money to people that not only didn't have a down payment, they also lacked the money to cover closing costs...
It really doesn't help that much of the "you should buy gold!" press in the last five years has come from people who have a vested interest in the price of gold rising (like Glenn Beck) so they can sell it off at a profit and recent buyers will be hit with a loss.
You do understand that gold dealers advertise on shows like Glenn Beck's, and I've heard commercials for the same gold merchants on left-leaning shows like Randi Rhodes...
His 'vested interest' ends when the check for the paid advertisement clears.
Pretty much the opposite situation from the one Beck et all describe would actually happen if we went back to the gold standard.
Beck "et all" (sic) don't try and predict the future, they argue that gold is a good hedge against inflation - at the turn of the last century (1900) you could buy a nice tailored suit and a steak dinner with a $10 gold coin, some 100 years later you can still buy a tailored suit and steak dinner with that very same $10 gold coin...
If Walmart (in your example) gives receipts without the identifier for the card, the buyer will have to trust that Walmart activates the card - the buyer will have no recourse with your anonymized receipt if they buy an inactivated card.
Or, he just mistakenly typed '@gmail.com' instead of '@gs.com'
Before autocorrect, people used to make this kind of mistake all the time, it was so common we had a name for it - we called it a 'typo', and we were forced to take ownership of the mistake.
Now we either call it txt-speak or we blame it on auto-correct.
A couple points - first off, there were hundreds of Patriot/Tea Party groups that applied, not just one monolithic Tea Party organization - each application was unique and individual.
I'm not sure how many of what you refer to as 'Occupy' applications were submitted, by your use I assume it was one.
The Occupy group that got a denial is actually years ahead (literally) of several dozen Patriot/Tea Party organizations that are still waiting YEARS LATER for a decision up or down on their application... So what? A group can not appeal a decision until it is rendered, by denying the Patriot/Tea Party groups a decision, they denied them the chance to appeal, and the appeal process would overturn baseless political denials. A delayed decision is effectively an unappealable denial - your 'Occupy' group, by getting a denial, could appeal - the Patriot/Tea Party groups can not.
Your lone counter-example proves/dis-proves nothing.
BTW, did your 'Occupy' group have their private donor information shared by IRS employees with other, non-governmental groups? Tea Party groups had their donor lists handed over by the IRS to Democrat groups...
You would benefit from an expansion of your news sources to include, maybe source documents and/or actual, under-oath testimony from the people involved...
If one of their treeâ(TM)s shade falls on a cafe table and cools the cafeâ(TM)s patrons as they enjoy their espressos, does that mean the tree-planting organization is no longer a charity?
If the cafe, through it's donation, is able to direct where the charity puts it's trees AND the charity places the tree in a location solely for the benefit of the cafe, then that charity is (in my mind) no longer a charity, it is at least a part-time landscaping firm.
Unless they hire women/minorities directly out of this program, this does nothing to change the mix of new hires at Google.
How many programmers hired at Google are only high school graduates? Have only two year associate degrees? Bachelors degrees?
Google wants to hire 'the best of the best' and someone who's interest was sparked by an offer of free classes isn't likely to be 'the best if he best', and even if they were, how would their application ever get past Google HR, beating out Ivy League PHDs?
So google will underwrite a few thousand three month programming classes so that those women who never programmed before will be qualified to work a google?
As for your vegetable soup example, what Google is really doing is more along the lines of this:
"I want vegetable soup now, but all I have are potatoes. So I go out and buy a few thousand packets of vegetable seeds and hand them out to people."
If Google wants to hire more women, they can do it quite easily - they simply start hiring more women. If they have to lower their hiring standards to accomplish that, that is their choice.
Simply put, google feels bad about it's white male dominated workforce, but rather than change hiring practices they are throwing money at this and treating it as a PR problem.
I can pretty much guarantee you that not one person that gets free tuition for this three month programming course will ever work at Google...
This type of remedy presumes to address an affordability issue, not an interest issue...
The only 'news' here is that 'thousands' of women and minorities will have access to a resource that was already available to them, but now at no cost.
Why is there no corresponding effort to encourage men to enter occupations typically taken by women (teacher, nurse, caregiver, etc.)?
Germany shut down nukes, used mothballed coal plants to pick up the slack.
Germany invests in solar/wind alternatives, but their power supply is 'bursty' and requires coal-fired plants to maintain power levels on cloudy, windless days and nights.
As time goes on, Germany starts replacing older coal-fired plants with bigger, cleaner coal-fired plants.
Eventually, when Germany has shut down their last nuke, and they max-out on solar/wind generation installations, they will still be running the recently built dial-fired plants because people like to have electricity at night, during rain storms, in winter, etc.
Germany tied it's future to reliance on coal and gas-fired power generation when it committed to shutting down their nukes.
Taxing energy that was generated for 'self-consumption'? Amazing, even if you choose to not be part of the national electric grid you are obligated to pay for it!
Is solar 'affordable' with or without subsidy? If it requires subsidy, then in my mind it isn't affordable, it's a more expensive form of power generation that the government forces your neighbors to help you pay for...
How 'green' of Germany - this is gonna blow a big hole in the 'see, Germany is doing fine without Nukes' argument, since an argument to follow Germany's lead inevitably leads to new coal-fired power plants... At least as a bridge until solar/wind become more affordable.
Just imagine that instead of Dem. Mayor Rahm Emanuel dropping these around the city of Chicago it was former President Bush - would this still sound like a good idea?
Why does this seem like a good idea under Mayor Emanuel?
What the US Marshalls are doing is illegal. As head of the executive branch, the president not only has the power to tell them to stop, he has the obligation to do so.
Seriously?
The President - any President - has an obligation to order subordinates (like the US Marshals) to stop acting illegally? Conversely, can the President order subordinates to act illegally?
The office of the President is not a law enforcement position...
Obama, in almost every area you mentioned, expanded the activities you want to toss back on Bush.
Where Bush sunset the Patriot Act, Obama renewed it.
Warrantless wire taps were just expanded under Obama in the last week or so.
Etc.
When you take a bad idea from a previous administration and renew/expand it, in some small way it becomes your program too. Unless, apparently, you are a Democrat.
Slashdot Mirror
At $67K/yr 'average' teachers each earn more than the average US household.
Their income is, by definition, above average.
http://finance.townhall.com/co...
Employers got into providing health insurance to employees as a way to increase employee compensation when the government changed the tax code and made it a deductables business expense and tax-free for the worker in the 1940s.
http://www.zanebenefits.com/bl...
And it was all federally backed to help make sure everyone had their chance at "the American Dream"!
My personal favorite was the 110% mortgage - loaning money to people that not only didn't have a down payment, they also lacked the money to cover closing costs...
You do understand that gold dealers advertise on shows like Glenn Beck's, and I've heard commercials for the same gold merchants on left-leaning shows like Randi Rhodes...
His 'vested interest' ends when the check for the paid advertisement clears.
Beck "et all" (sic) don't try and predict the future, they argue that gold is a good hedge against inflation - at the turn of the last century (1900) you could buy a nice tailored suit and a steak dinner with a $10 gold coin, some 100 years later you can still buy a tailored suit and steak dinner with that very same $10 gold coin...
If Walmart (in your example) gives receipts without the identifier for the card, the buyer will have to trust that Walmart activates the card - the buyer will have no recourse with your anonymized receipt if they buy an inactivated card.
Is a COmmon Business Oriented Language, right Grace Hopper?
Or, he just mistakenly typed '@gmail.com' instead of '@gs.com'
Before autocorrect, people used to make this kind of mistake all the time, it was so common we had a name for it - we called it a 'typo', and we were forced to take ownership of the mistake.
Now we either call it txt-speak or we blame it on auto-correct.
So, let's say a company (IBM) "donates" code that allows an Open Source software package support some unique (patented) feature on their hardware.
Is that charity, or a marketing expense to help the company sell more hardware?
Seriously, what 'Wiki' are you quoting? Why not quote actual IRS regulations?
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf...
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf...
A couple points - first off, there were hundreds of Patriot/Tea Party groups that applied, not just one monolithic Tea Party organization - each application was unique and individual.
I'm not sure how many of what you refer to as 'Occupy' applications were submitted, by your use I assume it was one.
The Occupy group that got a denial is actually years ahead (literally) of several dozen Patriot/Tea Party organizations that are still waiting YEARS LATER for a decision up or down on their application... So what? A group can not appeal a decision until it is rendered, by denying the Patriot/Tea Party groups a decision, they denied them the chance to appeal, and the appeal process would overturn baseless political denials. A delayed decision is effectively an unappealable denial - your 'Occupy' group, by getting a denial, could appeal - the Patriot/Tea Party groups can not.
Your lone counter-example proves/dis-proves nothing.
BTW, did your 'Occupy' group have their private donor information shared by IRS employees with other, non-governmental groups? Tea Party groups had their donor lists handed over by the IRS to Democrat groups...
You would benefit from an expansion of your news sources to include, maybe source documents and/or actual, under-oath testimony from the people involved...
If the cafe, through it's donation, is able to direct where the charity puts it's trees AND the charity places the tree in a location solely for the benefit of the cafe, then that charity is (in my mind) no longer a charity, it is at least a part-time landscaping firm.
Unless they hire women/minorities directly out of this program, this does nothing to change the mix of new hires at Google.
How many programmers hired at Google are only high school graduates? Have only two year associate degrees? Bachelors degrees?
Google wants to hire 'the best of the best' and someone who's interest was sparked by an offer of free classes isn't likely to be 'the best if he best', and even if they were, how would their application ever get past Google HR, beating out Ivy League PHDs?
Not one 'graduate' of this three month 'school' will ever get hired by google - ever.
So google will underwrite a few thousand three month programming classes so that those women who never programmed before will be qualified to work a google?
As for your vegetable soup example, what Google is really doing is more along the lines of this:
"I want vegetable soup now, but all I have are potatoes. So I go out and buy a few thousand packets of vegetable seeds and hand them out to people."
If Google wants to hire more women, they can do it quite easily - they simply start hiring more women. If they have to lower their hiring standards to accomplish that, that is their choice.
Simply put, google feels bad about it's white male dominated workforce, but rather than change hiring practices they are throwing money at this and treating it as a PR problem.
I can pretty much guarantee you that not one person that gets free tuition for this three month programming course will ever work at Google...
50-51% female birth rate, with actual population skewed a bit more towards women because they live longer (on average).
Why the need for gender equality in the workforce?
Gender equality in OPPORTUNITY is important, but it makes no sense to argue that 50-51% of all engineers, programmers, etc. must be female...
Why isn't there a corresponding push to get men in what were traditionally female occupations (nurse, teacher, caregiver, etc.)?
This type of remedy presumes to address an affordability issue, not an interest issue...
The only 'news' here is that 'thousands' of women and minorities will have access to a resource that was already available to them, but now at no cost.
Why is there no corresponding effort to encourage men to enter occupations typically taken by women (teacher, nurse, caregiver, etc.)?
Germany shut down nukes, used mothballed coal plants to pick up the slack.
Germany invests in solar/wind alternatives, but their power supply is 'bursty' and requires coal-fired plants to maintain power levels on cloudy, windless days and nights.
As time goes on, Germany starts replacing older coal-fired plants with bigger, cleaner coal-fired plants.
Eventually, when Germany has shut down their last nuke, and they max-out on solar/wind generation installations, they will still be running the recently built dial-fired plants because people like to have electricity at night, during rain storms, in winter, etc.
Germany tied it's future to reliance on coal and gas-fired power generation when it committed to shutting down their nukes.
Taxing energy that was generated for 'self-consumption'? Amazing, even if you choose to not be part of the national electric grid you are obligated to pay for it!
Is solar 'affordable' with or without subsidy? If it requires subsidy, then in my mind it isn't affordable, it's a more expensive form of power generation that the government forces your neighbors to help you pay for...
How 'green' of Germany - this is gonna blow a big hole in the 'see, Germany is doing fine without Nukes' argument, since an argument to follow Germany's lead inevitably leads to new coal-fired power plants... At least as a bridge until solar/wind become more affordable.
Just imagine that instead of Dem. Mayor Rahm Emanuel dropping these around the city of Chicago it was former President Bush - would this still sound like a good idea?
Why does this seem like a good idea under Mayor Emanuel?
Seriously?
The President - any President - has an obligation to order subordinates (like the US Marshals) to stop acting illegally? Conversely, can the President order subordinates to act illegally?
The office of the President is not a law enforcement position...
You realize that the President heads up exactly ONE of the three co-equal branches of the US Gov't, right?
Obama, in almost every area you mentioned, expanded the activities you want to toss back on Bush.
Where Bush sunset the Patriot Act, Obama renewed it.
Warrantless wire taps were just expanded under Obama in the last week or so.
Etc.
When you take a bad idea from a previous administration and renew/expand it, in some small way it becomes your program too. Unless, apparently, you are a Democrat.