WFP: Now Send a Message to the Senate
From the Working Families Party:
No employee of a multi-billion dollar company like Wal-Mart should be forced to go without medical care or forced to resort to Medicaid. The Fair Share for Health Care Act will ensure that large employers provide decent health benefits and level the playing field for responsible local businesses.
We’ve got over 50 Assembly cosponsors – now it’s time for you to ask your Senator to cosponsor the bill.
Ask your state Senator to sign on to the Fair Share for Health Care Act.
Bill O’Reilly’s Flying Circus
Four years ago, I was a guest on the “O’Reilly Factor,” part of a panel discussion on the income gap. It was a wonderfully surreal moment that, alas, I have yet to repeat. I just stumbled upon a transcript of the show. Below is a pretty funny bit that I believe is short enough that I can legally quote it.
Missing here is O’Reilly’s assertion that Cornell University is a socialist plot, “Parade” editor and DNC Treasurer Andrew Tobias inviting me to join the Democratic party, and, finally, Mr. O’Reilly brusquely ending the segment and announcing that Mel Gibson would be next after the commercials.
O’REILLY: OK, but here’s the deal. And you ought to know this, too, Shaun, is that for many years, I didn’t make any money. OK? And I lived in my younger time in a very frugal environment. OK? So I don’t believe that the government has the right, now that I’m successful, due to hard work and some luck, to come into my house and take my money and give it to other people, and they don’t even know what these people are going to do with it. That’s wrong, morally wrong.
…
RICHMAN: Are you living in poverty as a result of this 50 percent [tax rate]?
O’REILLY: Am I living in poverty? No, but what right do you or anybody else have, even in France, to take other peoples’ money and give it to somebody you don’t know? What right do you have, morally?
RICHMAN: It’s a basic system of fairness. Now when you weren’t making that money…
O’REILLY: Yes.
RICHMAN: When you were living in dire straits, wouldn’t it have been nicer to have a system where…
O’REILLY: No, I wouldn’t have taken a dime.
RICHMAN: You wouldn’t have taken a dime?
O’REILLY: No. Absolutely not.
RICHMAN: You would have died of tuberculosis?
O’REILLY: That’s right. And I wouldn’t have kids unless I could support them. That’s right, because I don’t believe in taking other peoples’ stuff and giving it to me. I won’t even take Social Security when I’m older. I’ll give it back or I’ll give it to charity. You see? That’s where you guys are wrong. You’re taking stuff, you’re making value judgments. You’re giving it to other people and you don’t know what those other people are going to do. That’s wrong. Am I wrong?
Why did they never invite me back?
Newsflash
This just in. After analyzing subpoenaed Google search records, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security announced that they foiled a new 9/11 Al Quaeda plot involving “blonde hair big tits.”
I hope that all you refuseniks and ACLU’ers out there stop and think about what kind of busty, peroxide doomsday your interference might have caused. Have more faith in your government. You’re not even using those civil liberties, anyway.
“…But they don’t mind throwing a brick…”
It’s touching that there are still people in this world who care enough to riot. I first heard about France’s proposed “first job contract” law from some of the French scientists with whom I am working. They’re absolutely pissed off.
The law would allow employers to hire first-time workers under the age of 26, and, for the first two years of this job, have no obligation to provide benefits and can fire the employee at any time for any reason. American workers have a similar status when they are hired for the first job, and for their second, third, fourth and tenth up until the day they die. Unless they have a union contract, that is.
Where is our outrage?